


A Trip for Biscuits

by scrapasassafras (M_hys_a)



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Circus, Alternate Universe - Historical, Anal Sex, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Cannibalism, F/F, False Identity, Great Depression, Hannibal Loves Will, Hannibal is a Cannibal, M/M, Oral Sex, References to Prostitution, Will Loves Hannibal
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-01
Updated: 2018-04-15
Packaged: 2019-04-16 23:19:23
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 4
Words: 26,349
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14175528
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/M_hys_a/pseuds/scrapasassafras
Summary: In late summer 1936, Bedelia du Maurier's traveling circus is plagued by a series of murders, and Will Graham begins a brief but passionate affair with a man named Roman Fell.---NOTE: This is a completed work that will update on Sundays.





	1. Odessa

**Author's Note:**

> Hi everyone! I have been lurking in the Hannibal fandom for years, tearing my way through Hannigram fics and crying over "Mizumono" rewatches, but this is the first time I've ever been brave enough to publish a Hannigram fic of my own. I hope you all enjoy it!
> 
> A couple of things to note: 1) this is a completed work that will be published in three parts, with the last installment including the third chapter and a coda, and 2) "took a trip for biscuits" was slang in the 1930's for attempting something that ended in utter failure. 
> 
> I have no beta, so all mistakes are my own. Thanks for reading! :)

 

**I. Odessa**

 

 

 

_There is dust coating the inside of his mouth and throat, dust clinging to the skin of his neck and arms, dust in the creases of his eyelids. He staggers down a dirt road, clutching a loaded gun to his chest and choking on the stifling air. The dead daughter-killer watches him from the roadside, his body riddled with bullet holes. Instead of blood, dust falls from his wounds like a fountain._

 

When Will becomes aware of his surroundings again he’s in Margot’s tent, seated on a rickety chair near her vanity table. She’s bent over a bucket, shaving one of her long, slim legs.

“How long have I been here?” he asks, rubbing a hand over his face. Her hand pauses halfway up a calf, and she hums thoughtfully.

“Oh, about forty minutes.”

Will lets out a breath that is somewhere between a sigh and a groan. He hears a low chuckle from Margot. 

“Did you go to your happy place again, Will?” she asks, rinsing her blade in the bucket. Will meets her eyes and nods. She smirks.

“I wish you’d consider taking me along with you some time,” she says. “God knows I could use a break from this place.” Will huffs out a bitter laugh.

“Trust me, Margot, you don’t want to go where I go,” he says, scrubbing his hands through his hair. Margot snorts.

“It can’t be worse than where I came from,” she says coolly. Will clears his throat, and an awkward silence falls between them.

“Do you still want to go to town?” he asks after a moment.

“Oh, I wouldn’t miss it for the world, Will,” she says in a drawl. “Twelve hours from now I won’t be able to set foot there, so I better see it while I can.” She smirks to herself and dries her leg, standing and giving Will an appraising look. She gestures to a bucket in the corner. “There’s fresh water and soap there, and you can use some of my pomade for your hair.”

He doesn’t want to go into town, not after what just happened. He wants to find the nearest dark corner and curl up in it until someone drags him out to fix an engine, but he won’t. Margot is the closest thing to a friend that he has in the Maury Brothers, and he knows that despite her smirks and wisecracks she spends each day dealing with just as much bullshit as he does, albeit of a vastly different variety. He also knows that the best way to keep himself from falling into an all-consuming panic about the state of his own mind is to keep his hands busy.

And besides, he needs a new book.

By the time fifteen minutes have passed Will is clean and sweet-smelling, and his hair is tamed but for one lone curl across his forehead. He blinks at his reflection in the mirror before looking away and popping two aspirin tablets in his mouth.

_Normal,_ he thinks bitterly, _as long as you don’t look too closely at my eyes._

Margot has replaced her robe and slippers with a light, floral-print blue dress and tasteful heels, and her hair is covered by a charming cloche hat. She grabs a purse off her tiny vanity and threads her arm through Will’s, her face detached and placid.

“Let’s see what this dusty excuse for a town has to offer,” she drawls, “shall we?”

 

 

\---

 

 

As it happens, the main thoroughfare of the dusty excuse for a town contains a drug store, a post office, a bank, and a diner. The stench of cow manure hangs over everything like a cloak, blowing in off the nearby stockyards and souring Will’s stomach. They visit the drug store first, where Margot looks through the lipstick and Will tries not to look excessively twitchy. He feels like a ship tossed on rough, stormy seas; anchorless, unmoored, like any moment a wave might throw him against a cliff face and shatter him completely.

Glaring at a woman who is openly staring at him, he wanders to the book rack and picks up the only one that isn’t drivel from the Publisher’s Weekly bestseller list. He’s already read it, but it’s better than nothing. The woman from before knocks a box of soap to the ground and Will winces at the sound of it, panic momentarily gripping him. He tells Margot he’ll wait for her at the diner and stumbles out into the street, past a row of scraggly trees and into the doorway of the diner. He slides into a booth and puts his hands over his eyes.  

“Mind if I join you?”

At first, Will can’t tell if the voice is real or a hallucination. He doesn’t move his hands away from his face. He clears his throat.

“Excuse me?” he says.

“I asked if I could join you.”

Real then.

Will slides his hands down and darts a glance towards the man standing by his booth. He is, unfortunately, striking: probably ten years older than Will, give or take, with broad shoulders, high cheekbones, gray-threaded sandy hair falling in a fringe over his forehead, and unsettling brown eyes. Will can’t bring himself to look at his mouth, not daring to risk where his thoughts might take him, so he moves his gaze to his body instead. The clothes he wears are nondescript: typical cotton and canvas in various shades of brown and white, but the figure beneath them is graceful and sturdy. The man’s sleeves are rolled up to the elbow, and Will can see that his forearms are corded with muscle, the skin tanned and the hair sun-bleached to a light gold. His hands are broad and calloused. Will swallows. The man makes him uneasy, and he can’t tell with any certainty whether it’s lust or his subconscious trying to warn him.

“I mind,” Will says curtly. He moves his gaze to the surface of the table.

“ _The Scarlet Letter,_ ” the stranger comments, and, blinking back his surprise, Will looks over at the book from the drug store where he’d tossed it on the table. The man has a strange accent. “A story about how the secrets that damn you in the eyes of society can also elevate you beyond the confines that same society inflicts.” 

Will draws in a tight breath. He finds the man’s voice oddly arousing. “Or how they can kill you instead,” he bites out. “And?” The man lets out a huff of amusement.

“Well, I couldn’t help but notice that you stole it,” he says, and Will stiffens, realizing that he’s right. He had stumbled out of the drug store with the book in hand and hadn’t looked back. He moves to rise, to return the book, but the man lifts a hand.

“No need,” he says, “I’ve already paid for it.” 

Will looks up and finally meets the man’s gaze. The man seems to take that as permission to sit, as he slides into the booth and flags down a waitress. Will does his best to ignore him as he orders two coffees, but finds himself unable to do so when the man’s long legs brush against his beneath the table. He fights to suppress a bitter grin.

_Lust, then_ , he thinks. _Not a warning. Lust._

Will’s mind may be parting from reality with all the grace of a rickety ferris wheel, but his body still reacts to it with avid enthusiasm. The man shifts his legs again, moving them so that Will’s knees are caught between his thighs, and Will feels his pulse throb in his groin. The man licks his lips and smiles.

_Presumptuous bastard,_ Will thinks, moving his eyes out the window.

“Not fond of eye contact, are you?” the man asks, and Will feels an eyelid twitch.

“Eyes tell me more than I care to know about most people,” he bites out. The man leans forward.

“You see the secrets of other people through their eyes?” he asks. He sounds genuinely curious, so Will darts a glance at him and nods shortly. Maybe he can scare him away.

“Among other things,” he says, but instead of seeming put off by Will’s confession, the man’s eyes take on an odd gleam.

“If more people could keep their secrets as well as Hester Prynne,” he muses, “then perhaps you wouldn’t be so afraid to look me in the eye. But secrets are a powerful thing.” He tightens the grip of his thighs and Will squirms in his seat. Between the warmth of the man’s legs and his unusual voice, he’s finding himself well on his way to erect in the middle of a public diner. He wonders where the hell the waitress is with their coffee. “Do you have any secrets?” the man asks, and Will has the presence of mind to smirk.

“Me? None at all,” he says in a drawl, and the man’s face curves into a smile. He opens his mouth to speak again and seems almost surprised when the waitress appears with their coffee. He thanks her politely but makes no move to touch the drink. Will sips his and looks out the window as the waitress walks away. He’s not going to be the one to keep the conversation going.

“You’re with the Maury Brothers circus, are you not?” the man asks after several moments. When Will looks back at him, his eyes have lost some of their gleam. “They are in town for the weekend, correct?”

“Yeah, I am,” he says evenly, “and yeah, they are.”

“I imagine the Maury brothers must have some secrets to hide. Perhaps you’d be more willing to discuss their secrets than your own?” the man suggests, and Will huffs out a laugh. He is no longer certain that this conversation isn’t a hallucination. It seems too surreal to be anything else.

“Oh, the Maury brothers have plenty of secrets,” he says. “For starters: they don’t exist. There is no ‘Maury brothers’. Our troupe leader is a woman: Bedelia du Maurier.”

The man licks his lips, and a strange smile spreads across his face. “Bedelia du Maurier?” he asks. The name rolls off his tongue. “If that is the case, then why not call it ‘The du Maurier Circus’? Or ‘The du Maurier Brothers’?”

“I think her words were ‘Most people in this country can’t even pronounce ‘du Maurier’, let alone spell it,’” Will says with a wry grin. He risks another glance at the man and finds that his eyes are fixated on Will’s face. Will has heard of the concept of natural affinity, a sort of hormonal chemistry that sets people to burning at the mere glance of a complete stranger, but he’s never had much reason to believe in it until now. The man sitting across from him seems to emit an energy that draws Will like a magnet, or like a moth in the thrall of an electric lamp. He’s never been approached so openly by a man before, and he wavers between telling him to fuck off and asking him to stop talking for three seconds so they can find a secluded place to suck each other off. “That, and she’s convinced no-one would go to a circus they knew was run by a woman.”

“I see. And this Bedelia, she travels with you, then?” the man asks, and Will nods.

“Like a shepherdess tending her flock of deranged human sheep,” he drawls, with no attempt to hide his bitterness.

“Do you enjoy what you’re doing?” the man asks. His eyes are gleaming again. “Traveling with the circus?” Will snorts. 

“No.”

“Do you crave change?”

Will licks his lips. He can feel the man’s eyes on his face but he won’t look at him, not even when his legs tighten against Will’s knees and send dizzying waves of heat pulsing into Will’s groin. Will is now fully erect, straining and uncomfortable in his denim pants. “Don’t we all crave change?” he asks.

“I certainly do.”

Will finally makes eye contact again, and the man’s face spreads into a smile. He’s leaning so far over the table that he seems to want to crawl over it. Will can’t see anything in the man’s eyes beyond a gleam of shadow and gold. He swallows, and the man follows the movement of his throat with his gaze.

“Hello there.”

Will draws in a sharp breath at the sound of Margot’s voice. The man across the table stiffens and releases Will’s legs, leaning back in the booth as his eyes lose their gleam. Margot’s eyes meet Will’s, curious, before she looks at the stranger.

“Mind if I sit?” she asks slowly, giving him an amused smile.

“Certainly not,” the man says in a smooth voice, rising to his feet. “In fact, you may have my seat. I ought to be going anyway.”

Margot moves to make room for the man as he stands, and Will watches her look him over as he does so. He can’t bring himself to look up at the man’s body, despite the temptation. He’s wishing he had asked to find that secluded place.

“Thank you,” Margot says, glancing over at Will with a smirk. 

“It’s no trouble at all,” he says, extending a hand to Margot. “My name is Roman Fell. It’s a pleasure to meet you. May I ask your name?”

“I’m Margot,” she says slowly taking his hand, “and that’s Will.”

Will nearly cringes at the sound of his own name, feeling heat at the back of his neck when the man turns his eyes on him again. He extends a hand, and Will hesitates a moment before finally reaching out to take it. His hand feels dry and warm where their skin comes into contact. Will lifts his gaze without meaning to.

“Hello, Will,” the man says. Will withdraws his hand quickly, but not before he catches the edge of Roman’s strange smile. Roman lays two coins on the table. “For the coffee,” he says, and then he smiles at Margot again. “Pleasure to meet you both.”

And then he walks away.

Margot waits until Roman is halfway to the door before she slides into the seat, and she waits until the bell rings and the door closes behind him before she leers at Will.

“Do you need some time alone in the bathroom, Will?” she asks in an innocent voice. “I promise I don’t mind. Or you could even run after him, if you want to. I’m sure it would make his day.”

Will finds that he can finally move again, and he scrubs a hand over his face. His body feels like it’s been rewired with electricity in the place of blood.

“Very funny, Margot,” he says, and she leans back in her seat. Will licks his lips and lets out a breath. “I’m experiencing hallucinations,” he says. “I hardly sleep. Some days I barely know where I am. That’s the last kind of complication my life needs right now.” It seems that Will’s ability to exercise the faculty of reason has returned now that the man is gone.

“It doesn’t have to be a _complication_ ,” Margot protests, “it could just be a... well-timed distraction.”

Will meets her gaze and lifts an eyebrow. “A distraction from what? From the fact that I’m losing my mind?” he asks. Margot rolls her eyes.

“Will, you could fall through Alice’s looking glass and still not be as crazy as most of the people in the Maury Brothers,” she drawls. “All of us have a couple of screws loose. Why do you think we’re part of a traveling circus?”  

Will thinks of the man’s strange smile, his corded forearms, and he knows that, on some level, Margot is right. “He’s also an asshole,” he says after a moment, and Margot scoffs.

“ _You’re_ an asshole,” she says, and Will can’t help but smirk. Margot smirks back at him.

“I’m just saying, it’s been a long time since Tallahassee, Will,” she says slowly. “A little relaxation might be the best thing for you. Something to give you a reason not to wander back into your happy place.”

Will thinks that nothing he could do with that man would ever be _relaxing._ It would be like going to bed with a Tesla coil. But that doesn’t mean he’s opposed to the idea.

“What did you two talk about?” Margot asks after a moment.

Will licks his lips. “I… the circus, mostly,” he says. “He asked about the circus.” Margot scoffs.

“And instead of asking him if he wanted to go out back and haul ashes, you stayed here and talked about the Maury Brothers?” she asks, her tone incredulous.

Will turns his gaze out the window. “I assumed he was a decent, God-fearing man that just loves the circus,” he says. Margot raises an eyebrow, but she doesn’t press the issue any further.

 

 

\--- 

 

 

Will lets out a curse, withdrawing his hand from beneath the hood of the truck with a grimace. Normally getting elbow-deep in an engine is the best way to clear his mind, but today he is distracted. While his hands probe and prod the broken pistons beneath him, his mind wanders away from the task at hand and up the thighs of the man in the diner. His body feels like a live wire, thrumming with energy that has nowhere to go and no hope of internal release.  

_Margot’s right,_ he thinks grimly, _it’s_ _been a long time since Tallahassee._

He heaves a sigh and steps away from the truck, wiping his oily hands on a rag and deciding to take a walk. He tries to check in on Peter, but when he arrives at the animal trailer the man is nowhere to be found. He makes his way to a nearby prop trailer, wondering if an iguana popped its cage again and made a mad dash into the forest of rainbow colored canvas and metal rods. He moves to open the door but stops short at the sound of men jeering and laughing nearby. In Will’s experience, that particular brand of laughter is never a good sign. He steps soundlessly towards the corner of the trailer and peeks around to see Peter’s small figure in the center of a group of three men, his face bruised and bloody and his body trembling. One of the men cuffs Peter’s ear, and they laugh when he cries out. He hears the crunch of soil and dry grass moving and realizes that the little girl is standing beside him. She is wringing her hands and watching as the men continue to heckle Peter. Blood pours from the gash in her throat, and tears stream from her doe eyes. She turns to Will and stifles back a sob, and her eyes seem to say, “Do you see? Do you see what they are doing to him?”

Will has become accustomed to a certain amount of violence living with a traveling circus.

However, just because he’s accustomed to it doesn’t mean that he accepts it.

He strides toward the man who struck Peter and kicks him in the back, using the moment of stunned stupor that falls over the group to land a square hit in the nose of one of the other men. The third man seems to realize he is in out of his depth and stumbles away, and the second man follows behind him, cursing and trying to stem the flow of blood from his nose. The first man recovers and lands a hit to Will’s jaw that sends him staggering. But Will is fast, and stronger than he looks, so he responds by punching the man in the stomach and slinging his arm around his neck, sliding until he has him in a chokehold.

The little girl sniffs and wipes the tears from her eyes with her sleeve. She steps out from behind the corner of the trailer and looks at him expectantly. “You know what you want to do,” she seems to say, her eyes fever-bright. “So do it.” 

Will feels a violent shudder through his body and releases the man, who stumbles forward, choking, and catches himself against the wall of the trailer. Will is shaking from adrenaline and from the knowledge of what he’s nearly done.

“You’re dead now, boy,” the man growls, but he pauses before he moves forward.

“You might want to crawl back into whatever hole you crawled out of, if you know what’s good for you.” 

Will recognizes the voice as that of the man from the diner, of Roman Fell, but he doesn’t look toward it. The man sneers, but doesn’t say anything else before he stalks away. Will swallows, his body still sparking with bursts of electricity. He can hear Peter sniffling next to him and lets out a sharp breath.

“It’s okay, Peter,” he says, his voice hoarse. “Go find Ben. Tell him what happened. He’ll have someone else take care of the animals for you.”

Peter meets his gaze and looks over at Roman, his eyes questioning.

“It’s okay, Peter, really,” Will says, gently, and it’s only with this confirmation that Peter shuffles quietly away.

Roman gazes over at him, his brow creased. “Mind if I take a look at your injury?” he asks. Will looks away.

“I’m fine,” he says.

“You’re bleeding,” Roman retorts, and Will realizes that he’s right. He touches a gentle hand to his lower lip and finds he’s bitten it hard enough to draw blood. He doesn’t move when Roman circles around to stand in front of him, pulling a handkerchief from his pocket and gently wiping the blood from Will’s chin and neck. He meets Will’s eyes, as if waiting to see whether he’s going to protest, before stepping closer.

“That was an impressive display,” he says in an even tone. He draws in a breath and bites his lower lip, as if considering. “If I didn’t know better, I’d say you enjoyed it.”

Will forces his expression to remain neutral as his pulse begins to race again.

_He’s right,_ he thinks. _I did enjoy it, I always do._

“What’s it to you whether or not I enjoyed it?” he asks, and Roman shrugs.

“It’s certainly nothing that those men didn’t deserve,” he says. “But the world is full of people hurting each other, Will, and you don’t strike me as the sort of man who throws a punch at every person who does wrong. So what was it about those men that provoked your ire?”

Will shudders, a little, at the idea that he is so transparent to this stranger. It’s intoxicating. He’s shocked at the man’s audacity, asking him such pointed questions, and shocked at his own inability not to answer.

_I guess it’s more of that natural chemistry,_ he thinks distantly. He shifts on his feet and tries to ignore his growing arousal.

“Peter is an innocent,” he says slowly. “You’re right, the world is full of people that are … tasteless. But Peter isn’t one of them.”

Roman folds the handkerchief in half and pulls a flask out of his pocket, dousing a clean section of the cloth with liquid before pressing it gently against Will’s lower lip. Will winces at the sting of alcohol. “‘ _Hide us from the wrath of the lamb_ ’,” Roman murmurs with a small smile. He pulls the handkerchief away. “Do you have trouble with taste?” he asks, and Will scoffs.

“My thoughts are often not … tasty,” he says slowly, “but I don’t let them control my actions. The circus is a magnet for the kind of person who acts before they think. The kind that doesn’t consider the way their actions will affect others. That lives for pleasure or profit, or both.” He draws in a breath as Roman brushes a thumb over his lower lip. He can feel his pulse fluttering in his neck, and he watches as Roman’s eyes settle there. He swallows, and Roman removes his thumb. Will licks his lips and turns his head, exposing his neck and tender jaw, waiting to see how far the man will go. Heady arousal makes his limbs feel heavy. “As I said, tasteless.”

Roman presses the flask into Will’s hand and Will takes a grateful swig, aware of Roman’s eyes on his throat as he swallows. He’s enjoying himself immensely, far more than he should, relieved beyond measure that the afterglow of his encounter with Peter’s attackers can be channeled into this act of seduction instead of condensing into solid horror at the fact that, for the briefest of moments, he’d wanted to kill that man.

He thinks about what Margot said. She’d called Roman Fell a ‘welcome distraction.’ Will thinks he is beginning to agree with her.

“What do you mean by ‘tasteless’?” Roman asks, and Will feels a wry smile tug at his lips.

“Oh, just look around,” he drawls. “Our troupe leader has her moments,” he admits. “She likes to find men in the staff to keep her entertained at night, and then gives them a pass when they laze around all day and make everyone else pick up their slack. One of the roustabouts, Joseph, hasn’t done an hour of actual work in weeks. And one of the of the girls in the peep tent, Sarah, has a habit of stealing money from the people who can least afford it and running off to get drunk. And I’ve heard that Francis, the so-called ‘Dragon-Man’, had a bad habit of killing innocent people before Bedelia got him on a leash.”

Roman’s lips curl in amusement and Will meets his gaze, his eyes intentionally lidded. He tilts his head back when Roman’s fingers graze the tender area of his jaw, the touch sending pleasant, sparking sensations down the column of Will’s neck and into his belly. Roman is looking down at him with such intensity of focus that it’s almost comical, his fingers wandering back up Will’s throat and into the curls at the base of his skull.

“But those things are forgivable, at least,” Will murmurs. “Do you want to know what I find most tasteless of all?”

Roman’s eyes skate over his face, his gaze a physical weight. Their faces are only inches away from each other. Will meets his eyes.

“Men who come on to strangers in a crowded diner, and then try again right after they get socked in the jaw,” he says, and Roman’s fingers freeze. His body stiffens, and he meets Will’s gaze with a sharp smile. Will smiles back. “If you want to fuck me, Roman, at least bring me dinner first.”

“You’re very rude, Will,” Roman says after a moment, and Will looks away.

“So I’ve been told,” he says breezily, and then he steps away. He’s hard in his pants for the second time today, arousal a pleasant crackling current in his low belly, and he feels better than he has in months. “I’m going back to work.”

He can feel the man’s gaze on his back as he walks away, but Roman doesn’t try to stop him. Will hopes it’s not the last he sees of him. 

 

 

\---

 

  

Will is laying on his bedroll when he hears it: a piercing scream cutting through the predawn darkness. He’s been drifting in and out of sleep for hours, plagued by dreams where an antlered shadow pins him down and devours the flesh of his throat. At first Will can’t tell whether the scream is in the real world or in the world that his mind creates, so he doesn’t move. But when the scream is followed by more shouts near the center of the camp, he feels a cold clench of fear grip his stomach and forces himself to rise.

His first stop is the animal trailer, where he finds Peter skittish but in one piece. His face is still bandaged. Will tells him to stay in the trailer and keep the animals calm, and that he’ll come back to check on him as soon as he can. Will’s next stop is Margot’s tent, which still smells like sex from the night before. Margot is sitting on the end of her bed, her feet bare and a cigarette in her fingers.

“Good morning, Will,” she says in a wry tone, her voice soft and gunmetal smooth against the din outside. “Care to go see what all this fuss is about?”  

They don’t have far to look. Margot’s tent is in the center of the camp, only a few yards away from the commotion. They make their way toward the press of bodies, and the crowd parts for them easily. It takes Will several moments to register what he’s seeing.

“Oh Jesus,” Margot says softly. Will steps closer, his hands shaking.

The body of a roustabout is splayed out on a checkered blanket, the wrists and ankles tied together and the throat cut in a gaping wound. The corpse is naked except for thin cotton briefs, the once-muscular, tanned body on full display. There is an apple lodged in its mouth, and a deep cut in its side.

All of the sights and sounds around him fade away, and Will is aware of nothing but his own breath and the body laid out before him. The last time he did this was twelve months ago, when he stumbled into a shack in the bayou and found a little girl crumpled inside with her throat cut. He knows he should turn around, go back to his bedroll in the back of a truck and wait until the body is taken away and it’s safe again, but the truth whispers in his ear like a lover: _he wants to look_.

Will draws in a breath, and closes his eyes.

_He finds the roustabout leaving Bedelia’s tent some time after two a.m. He’s been standing in the darkness for hours, biding his time, and his patience has paid off. As expected, the roustabout is drunk and stumbling, and he doesn’t notice when Will comes up from behind him and pulls him into a choking grip. The man is strong, his muscles not just for show, but Bedelia’s wine makes him sluggish and awkward in his movements. Will pulls him into the darkness beside Bedelia’s trailer and cuts his throat with a scalpel, pulling the man’s head back and angling his body so that the blood pours out of him onto the dry earth below. Once he’s confident the man is dead, Will drags him into the darkness further away from the trailer and lays him out on the ground. He removes the man’s clothing and uses the scalpel to cut into the man’s side, removing his kidney and placing it on a piece of wax paper. He uses the man’s clothes to clean the wounds before folding them and placing them in a satchel for safekeeping. From the same satchel he pulls two pre-cut lengths of rope and uses them to hog-tie the body. Bedelia has her trailer on the outskirts of the camp, but Will needs to leave his offering in a more public place. He waits another hour before he makes his next move, when he’s sure that even the so-called security guards are drunk and dozing at their posts. He hoists the satchel and then the body of the roustabout over his shoulders and carries them both into the center of the camp. The electric lights are all out, the whole camp shrouded in sleep, so he takes a checkered blanket from the satchel and spreads it out over the dry, hard-packed soil. He moves the roustabout’s body into the center of the blanket and places an apple in his mouth, smirking to himself at the display. He wants to be sure that Bedelia gets the message._

_This is his design._

Will comes back to himself with a lurch. He’s in Bedelia’s trailer, and the sun is shining brightly through the windows. The clock on the wall reads 8:45 a.m. Bedelia stares at him from the other side of the table, her slender fingers clutching a wine glass. 

“Have you decided to rejoin the world of the living, Will?” she asks coolly.

Will is shaking. The last time he let himself look, he had known exactly who the little girl’s killer was after acting out her murder. He has no such clarity now. It’s like the roustabout’s murderer wasn’t even a person, just a shadow.  

“Bedelia, it’s not even nine in the morning,” he bites out, “isn’t it a little early to be drinking?”

Bedelia raises her eyebrows. “I woke up to the news that there was a dead man laid out like a pig at a picnic in the middle of my camp, Will,” she says coolly, “I’d say that this is a perfectly reasonable time to be drinking, given the circumstances.”

“Are you already drunk?” he asks, and she gives him a watery smile.

“Among other things,” she drawls. 

“Where’s the body?” Will asks, and Bedelia looks away. 

“The police took Joseph hours ago,” she says, “around the time you wandered over to my trailer in a fit of delirium and led the police to a sea of dried blood.” She takes another sip of wine.

“Aren’t you going to do something about the murder?” Will asks, and Bedelia raises her eyebrows. For a moment, Will considers telling her about his vision, his certainty that the murder was a message to her, but his mouth won’t form the words. She doesn’t trust him, and he certainly doesn’t trust her. Like Hester Prynne, he is very good at keeping secrets.

“What do you suggest I do, Will?” Bedelia asks, her voice slightly slurred. “Believe me, I am all ears.”

Will swallows, and Bedelia smirks.

“As I thought.” She smooths out the fabric of her skirt with her free hand. “Not all killers are as... _scrupulous_ in their reasons for killing as you are, Will,” she says delicately. “They can’t all be _dealt with_ the way that you prefer.”

“I’m not a killer,” Will protests, and Bedelia’s lips curl slightly.

“Past experience would indicate otherwise,” she says coolly, and Will feels his face flush.

“I killed one person, Bedelia. That doesn’t make me a killer.”

Bedelia’s eyebrows crawl toward her hairline, and her mouth curves into a smirk.

“Self-reflection is what separates us from animals, Will,” she says smoothly. “Assign yourself a moment to use it, and consider whether what you’ve just said has any sort of positive bearing on the point you’re trying to make.”

Will feels his stomach clench, a nauseating blend of anger and humiliation roiling in his gut. Bedelia is the only person Will has ever met who can laugh at a person without making a sound. He rises from the table unsteadily. His vision left him drained, and he doesn’t have the stomach for any more verbal sparring with Bedelia du Maurier.

“Let me know if there’s anything I can do to help, _Bedelia_ ,” he snaps, and Bedelia gazes up at him with raised brows.

“This is a matter that doesn’t concern you, Will,” she says evenly, “but thanks for the offer.”

He lets the door of Bedelia’s trailer slam shut behind him.

 

 

\---

 

 

Sunset finds Will walking well outside the limits of the camp, smoking a cigarette and taking pulls of whiskey from a small glass bottle. Neither the daughter-killer nor the little girl has seen fit to make an appearance, so Will is alone. He looks over his shoulder at the sight of the camp in the distance, the only point of light in the growing darkness, and he thinks that it looks like a boat on the sea. It makes him feel strangely safe.

The distance allows him to clear his mind and think over the hard facts of his situation. He is losing his grip on reality. He knows this, and he is at a loss for how to fight it. More than that, he has no idea how much longer the tenuous grip that he currently has will hold. Today he saw and felt himself going through the motions of killing that roustie and trussing him up like a pig, and _he enjoyed it._

Will thinks it’s a very real possibility that one of these days he will fall into one of his visions and simply never wake up from it. He needs an anchor, someone or something that he can turn to when his mind takes him to dark places, something to help him find his way out. But no-one in Will’s life has ever felt solid enough to be a counterweight against the sea of fear and uncertainty he navigates on a daily basis, and no-one has ever made him feel safe enough to reveal the inky darkness that lives at his core. There was a woman in Tallahassee, but she was flat and calm; not an anchor, but a still patch of water where Will could steer his boat and catch his bearings. In the end, he knew he’d eventually find his way out into the roiling sea again.

He thinks that perhaps he should have turned himself in to the police instead of surrendering himself to Bedelia’s dubious mercy. He thinks that maybe he should have simply turned the gun on himself and been done with it.

He takes a rough drag from his cigarette and tries to fight off the wave of despair that threatens to consume him. He feels horribly, achingly alone.

He doesn’t make it back to the camp for several hours, when the last of the townie police have finally left and everyone but the guards are asleep. There is a light on in Bedelia’s trailer, but Will doesn’t pay her another visit. Instead he makes his way toward his bed at the far edge of the camp, and he stops short in an intoxicating blend of fear and anticipation when he realizes there is a man sitting in the back of the truck. Will can hardly make out his features in the darkness, just an orange bead of light from a cigarette ember and a shadowy outline of broad shoulders.

“Hello, Will,” the shadow says in an even tone, and Will feels a pulse of heat through his body. 

“You don’t give up easy, do you?” he asks, pulling himself up into the bed of the truck.

“I never give up on anything worth doing,” Roman replies. He offers his cigarette to Will, and Will takes a long drag.

“I assume you heard about what happened?” he asks, handing the cigarette back, and Roman grunts in agreement.

“It’s all the talk in town," he says. “Did you know him?”

“Not really,” Will says evenly, “and I get the sense you didn’t come here to talk about him, either.” Roman huffs a quiet laugh.

“No, I didn’t.”

“So what _are_ you doing here?”

Roman takes a drag from his cigarette. “I came to bring you dinner,” he says, and Will grins. His despair is replaced by tendrils of anticipation curling through his limbs. Roman passes him a small metal container and fork. The container is still warm.

“It’s an omelette,” Roman says, taking a drag of his cigarette. “Nothing fancy, but it’s the best I could do without access to a real kitchen.”

Will hardly hears the words that Roman is speaking, intent as he is on devouring the food. He can taste egg, onions, peppers, and some sort of mineral-rich meat. It tastes far better than anything eaten in the back of a truck out of a metal tin has any right to taste. He can feel Roman watching him as he eats. 

“Violence against traveling carnival workers is no unusual thing,” Roman says after a few moments, “although one does have to wonder about the motives. Are the killers punishing them for the relative freedom of the lives they lead? For the temptation that they represent?”

Will shifts and leans his back against the opposite side of the truck bed, blinking back the vision of the roustie tied up with an apple in in his mouth as he chews his omelette. He thinks about the anchorless boat on the sea, and he thinks that it would feel very good to talk about the things he saw in his vision. He’ll probably never see this man again, so what does it matter if he scares him away?

“The killer wasn’t punishing the victim,” he says. “This was no drunk townie on a rampage against carnies. This was-” Will stops himself before he can go further, feeling his face flush. He casts a glance through the darkness and can just make out the outline of Roman’s face. He is very still.

“Please, go on,” he murmurs, and Will clears his throat. He has never discussed his visions with anyone before, and he wonders how much he should reveal. Meanwhile, his throat is clenching from the desperation to share his thoughts.

“The killer was trying to humiliate the leader of our troupe,” he says after a moment. “To threaten her and send a message without having to lay a finger on her. That roustie has been one of her… ‘gentleman callers’ for weeks. The killer must have known that. He hog-tied him, put an apple in his mouth, dressed him up like a pig at a Sunday church roast, because that’s how she viewed him. As a piece of meat to be served up on a platter. Most carnie murders are hackjobs, the result of ignorance and drunkenness. But not this. This was… elegant.” Will realizes the inappropriateness of his statement the moment after he says it, and when he turns to look at Roman, he finds that the man is leaning towards him, gazing at him intently.

“There’s something else, though,” Will says after a moment, moving his eyes back out into the darkness. “The killer took one of his organs. I’m not sure why he would do that. Maybe as a trophy? But that doesn’t feel right to me.” He shakes his head, trying to ground his thoughts. Talking about this openly feels like placing his feet on solid ground after days on a boat. He feels like he can breathe for the first time since he laid eyes on the body.

“Have you told the leader of your troupe about your suspicions?” Roman asks. Will swallows and looks away.

“No. I think she has enough on her mind as it is.”

“And how is she holding up?”

Will huffs out a laugh. “Badly.”

Silence settles over them for several moments, and Roman lights another cigarette. Strangely, he doesn’t seem put off by Will’s talk of the murder.

“You’re leaving tomorrow, aren’t you, Will?” he asks. 

“Yes,” Will murmurs. Roman takes a drag.

“Where are you headed next?”

“Abilene.”

“And after that?”

“Fort Worth.”

“I’ll be sorry to see you go.”

Will looks over at Roman and can make out just enough of him in the darkness to know that he is staring at him, his arms spread out over the rim of the truck bed and his legs bent and open like an invitation. Will’s arousal spreads outward from his belly and suffuses every limb, all the way to the tips of his fingers and toes.

“Well, you brought me dinner, Roman,” he says slowly. “Do you have a plan for what you will do next?” Roman takes another slow drag of his cigarette. 

“Anything you’ll allow me to, Will,” he answers, his voice gravelly. Will feels his blood turn to electric current in his veins.

“We’ll have to be quiet,” he whispers, and Roman puts the cigarette out against the side of the truck bed.

“It’s not a problem,” he replies, and with an almost leonine grace he moves back to Will’s bedroll. Will rises and closes the door of the truck bed, giving them a modicum of privacy that in all likelihood is unnecessary in the darkness. The air is stifling, and Will draws in a breath when he feels the heat of the man’s skin close to his, his breath stirring the hair on his forehead. “Would you be so kind as to lie down?” Roman murmurs, and Will does so, stripping off his shirt and tugging down his pants while Roman strips above him. Will stifles a moan when he feels Roman’s weight settle on his body. Roman’s cock is already hard against his thigh. Will can’t see a thing in the darkness, and it makes him feel like he’s moving through a dream. Roman’s hands have found their way between Will’s legs, and he rubs his face against the column of Will’s throat, breathing in deeply and sucking on the bruised part of his jaw. 

And it should worry Will, really, how good it is. He is losing touch with reality, seeing visions of people that he knows are dead, falling into murderous rages, carrying out brutal murders in some alternate world that his mind has invented for itself. He shouldn’t be capable of feeling anything right now besides a never-ending horror at the state of his own mind. Sex shouldn’t even be possible. But instead, Will feels incandescent, molten and euphoric, like his body is melting and pooling into the surface of the truck bed and down on to the ground below. 

Roman’s mouth is everywhere: on Will’s throat and shoulders and nipples and navel, his fingers stroking down the length of Will’s legs and clutching at the flesh of his ass. When Roman’s lips close over his cock Will’s entire body shudders. He has the illogical sense that Roman is trying to drink him, drawing him into the back of his throat and swallowing him down. He feels like prey caught in a web, stunned and trapped while he is dissolved from the inside out and a spider sucks the marrow from his bones.

Will comes, and he has to bite his own fist to keep from crying out. Roman’s mouth replaces his fist and Will can taste himself on the other man’s tongue. His body hums at the touch of warm, wet fingers at his entrance, opening him up, and the spider moves up the web to devour him completely. Roman’s cock feels thick and heavy against him, and Will spreads his legs wider to make room. Roman places a gentle hand over his mouth when he slides inside him, and Will realizes he is gasping. The web is closing, tightening around both of them as they move together, and Will lets himself fade into that hot darkness, his head flung back and Roman’s mouth at his neck, biting and moaning and saying his name. There is nothing in the world but their sticky movement, the suffocating web of their shared pleasure. Will’s second orgasm takes him by surprise, and he feels Roman pulse inside him in tandem, clawing at his back and choking out a groan.

Neither of them move for several minutes, lying together in the darkness, and Will listens to the sound of their breathing. At length, Roman withdraws, and Will winces at the soreness and at the mess running down the back of his legs. 

“Do you have any washcloths?” Roman asks quietly, and Will lets out an embarrassed laugh. He feels drunk from pleasure, and has to remind himself how to speak. 

“Ah, no. I don’t exactly… do this often,” he admits. He can tell that Roman is watching him through the darkness, but he can’t see his face. “We can use my shirt. I don’t mind the mess, I’ll just clean up in the morning.” Roman passes him his shirt, and Will does his best to clean the not inconsiderable amount of semen that covers his chest and legs. He moves slowly, accommodating of the sore twinge that accompanies his movements. Roman watches him throughout his attempted ablutions, but he doesn’t speak. When Will is done, he settles back against his now-filthy bedroll.

Will closes his eyes when he feels Roman’s hands on his face, moving to press his hair away from his forehead.

“Do you mind if I stay with you for a while, Will?” he asks, and Will shifts.

“No,” he answers, “but I have to warn you, I don’t sleep much, and when I do, I usually wake up from nightmares covered in sweat.” He gives a bitter chuckle at his own words. “I’m not exactly an ideal bed partner.”

“I wouldn’t say that,” Roman says lowly, and Will shifts, unsure how to respond. His body feels warm and relaxed, and his mind is still sluggish from his orgasms. Roman settles in alongside him, laying on his side and draping an arm across Will’s chest. His fingers caress the skin of Will’s neck slowly and methodically, and despite himself Will feels his eyes growing heavy. “I’d like to see you again, Will,” Roman murmurs, and Will grins lazily.

“I’m not opposed to the idea,” he drawls.

“I have an old friend in Fort Worth,” Roman whispers, moving his fingers to card through Will’s hair. “Perhaps I’ll meet you there, cook you a real dinner?”

“Fuck me on a real bed?” Will asks, pointedly coarse, and Roman’s chest rumbles in a chuckle. 

“Yes,” he murmurs, nuzzling against Will’s ear. “That too.”

Will shifts against him, turning so that his face is pressed into the thick hair on the man’s chest. He speaks almost without meaning to. “I’d like that,” he whispers, and Roman kisses the top of his head.

“Good,” he murmurs.

Will has no clear sense of how much time he spends that way, breathing in the man’s scent and trying to fight his steadily building dread at the thought of being alone again, back on a rickety boat in the thrashing, wine-dark sea.

“Go to sleep, Will,” Roman murmurs through the darkness. “I’m right here beside you.”

Will sleeps through til dawn, and he wakes up feeling rested for the first time in twelve months. 

Roman is gone.  


	2. Fort Worth

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In this chapter: Will meets the Dragon, the author has entirely too much fun laughing at Frederick Chilton, and Hannibal tries and fails to maintain his chill about Will.

 

II. Fort Worth

 

_He can hear the wounded thing, but he can’t see it. Piercing cries ring out from somewhere in the darkness, and Will’s chest aches at the sound. The cries give way to pathetic mewls, as if the creature has exhausted itself and is starting to lose hope. Will cuts his hands on brambles and mesquite bushes as he tears through the brush, desperately trying to follow the sound. He has to reach it, has to save it from dying a painful and lonely death out here in a wasteland of tumbleweed, or he fears the dusty earth will break open and swallow him whole._

 

“W-Will?”

Will gasps at the sound of his name, stopping short in his movements and shuddering. He doesn’t turn around, clutching his flashlight and staring out into the dark expanse of scrub brush around him. It has to be after midnight.

“Will, what are you doing?”

Will’s hands hurt. He shines the flashlight on one of his palms and grimaces at the sight. It’s covered in so many razor-thin cuts that it looks like he’s wearing bloody lace gloves. He swallows thickly.

“Can’t you hear it, Peter?” he asks, his voice tremulous.

“H-hear what, Will?” Peter is speaking to him softly, gently, like he would a spooked horse.

“The animal,” Will grinds out. “There’s a wounded animal out here, can’t you hear it crying?”

He hears Peter stepping closer behind him, feels a gentle hand on his shoulder.

“There’s n-no animal, Will,” he says quietly. “I followed you for thirty minutes, and I never - I never heard anything.”

Will lets out a shuddering breath and scrubs a hand over his face, remembering a moment too late that it’s covered in blood.

“It’s okay, Will,” Peter says quietly, squeezing his shoulder lightly. “You w-were just worried, that’s all. You don’t like it when things are h-hurting.” Will can feel despair leaking into his chest between the cracks in his ribs.

“Thanks for following me out here, Peter,” he says distantly.

“You’re w-welcome, Will,” Peter replies. When Will finally turns around, Peter is looking away, gently scratching the fur under a rat’s chin. Will looks around and realizes that the camp is nowhere in sight.

Will feels like a stretched-out rubber band, worn unevenly and unable to maintain a clear shape. It’s been three weeks since Odessa, and he feels like he is coming apart. He spends more time in the world his mind invents than he does in reality, and he interacts more frequently with the daughter killer than he does any living person. His days have become a haze of unreality, stifling heat, and the oily insides of engines. Each one feels endless, and the nights are worse. When he’s able to sleep, his dreams careen across the border between erotic fantasy and harrowing nightmare, vivid and overwhelming. Most of them start with Roman seated across from him in the back of the truck, and the two of them simply talking. They talk about death, philosophy, art, and the idea of rebirth, sometimes for hours at a time, before silence falls over them and Will lays back to bare his throat. In others, Will stumbles through the darkness in pursuit of an antlered shadow, only to find himself gored through the back and left to bleed out on the ground. His last thought before dying is that he feels betrayed.

Having nothing else to live for, Will has begun to see his reunion with Roman Fell as a guidepost and an anchor to help him navigate through days that alternate between hallucinatory fantasy and the dusty, back-breaking mundanity of reality. When he’s back on the ship, being tossed and battered like driftwood by the waves, he thinks of the time spent cocooned in Roman’s arms in the back of the truck. He remembers the smell of him, and the shape of him in the darkness; he remembers how Roman did not flinch back from the claustrophobic darkness as it closed in on Will, but told him he was beside him within it. The memory is a beacon that helps him find his way back out of the miasma of his mind, that reminds him that it’s possible for him to be present in reality.

He knows that thinking this way is dangerous, that it might foster a dependency on a man who is little more than a stranger, but he feels he has no choice. He has nothing else in the world to hold on to; he can either cleave to Roman, or be set adrift.

Will pauses a moment in their walk back to the camp and shines his flashlight out into the night, half expecting to find Roman staring back at him. Instead, all he sees is thick, cloying darkness, gouged through the middle by a violating beam of incandescence. Will shudders and turns away.

When he reaches his bed, he climbs into the truck and lays out on his back, afraid to touch the bedroll and bloody his blankets. His body is aching with soreness and unfulfilled desire, and he feels like the night air is trying to crawl down his throat.

They made camp in Fort Worth two days ago. After more than fifty-six hours spent looking over his shoulder, Will has finally accepted that Roman Fell isn’t coming.

 

 

\---

 

 

Will dreams of a four-post bed with a thick, padded mattress and soft cotton sheets. He’s bound to the frame at the wrists and ankles, and an antlered shadow is forcing bloody pieces of meat down his throat. He wakes up hard and to the sound of screaming.

He feels a fatalistic sense of deja vu as he staggers from his bedroll and out into the pre-dawn darkness, trying to suppress the tendrils of anticipation snaking up the back of his skull and replace them with an appropriate amount of horror. Peter meets him outside this time, clutching a rat to his chest and following him as he weaves his way toward Margot’s tent. There is a crowd of people right outside it, an eruption of shouting and screaming and confused movement, and Will feels a wave of nausea overtake him.

_Margot_ , he thinks. It never occurred to him that she might be the victim. He elbows his ways through the crowd, trying to ignore the ringing in his ears. _Margot._

But it’s not Margot’s tent that’s drawn the crowd, Will realizes, it’s the one next to it. There’s blood pooling in the crabgrass outside the entrance, swirling over the dusty soil like calligraphy. Will steps toward it in a daze, his hands trembling. He moves past the crowd and through the opening of the tent without conscious control of his body, and he doesn’t breathe until he catches sight of what’s inside.

The body of a peep show dancer sits propped at a vanity table, her head face-down in a bag of coins. One of her hands clutches an open wine bottle and the other is splayed around a stemmed glass that looks like it might have been taken from Bedelia’s private collection. There are no visible signs of violence on her body except for the fact that a piece of her thigh is missing.

Will steps closer, once again an insect in the thrall of an electric lamp, and he glances in the mirror to see his own pale face suspended above the tableau of death. He begins to shake, his mind lighting up like a live wire. He stares at his reflection in the mirror and closes his eyes.

_He slips into the woman’s tent early in the evening, while the show is in full swing. He knows that she snuck away to town hours ago, and he knows that she won’t be back til well after midnight. He knows that she will try to avoid drawing attention to herself on her return, and he knows that she will be alone when she slinks back. Will knows because he’s watched her every moment for the past two days, and each night has been the same. His patience never fails to bear fruit. He arranges the vanity table in preparation for her arrival, moving all of her bottles and brushes and clearing space for his display. Once the table is clear he pulls a canvas bag stuffed with coins out of his satchel and lays it in the center of the table, folding back the brim so that coins threaten to slip out of the sides. He then withdraws a bottle of wine, which he uncorks and smells briefly before pouring into a crystalline glass._ _Bâtard-Montrachet_ _Grand Cru. He can’t resist taking a small sip, a minor self-indulgence. It is one of Bedelia’s favorites, and he wants to make sure there is plenty left for her should she be inclined to indulge. He hovers in the darkness near the entrance to the tent, and when the woman finally stumbles inside it is easy for him to pull her back into his chest and cover her nose and mouth. She attempts to struggle but she is small and lethargic, her movements slowed by drink, and she suffocates quickly. He lays her out on the small cot in the back of the tent and withdraws a filet knife, cutting a sizeable piece of flesh from the meat of her right thigh and packaging it tightly with the wax paper and twine. Her leg is bleeding heavily, and he thinks it adds a certain amount of dramatic flair to the display when he props her up and the blood seeps down her calf and snakes its way across the ground. He cradles the head in the bag of coins and arranges the fingers so that they clutch the wine and the beautiful glass. He steps back and takes a moment to admire his display. It is Bedelia’s covetousness elevated to high art: her vanity, her love of money, her dependence on alcohol. He only wishes he could see her face when she first lays eyes upon it. A smile spreads across his face, and his body is alight with humor._

_This is his design._

When Will regains consciousness he’s in the passenger seat of a pickup truck, rattling down an unpaved road. His head feels like it’s splitting in half. He spares a quick glance at the driver and the hairs on the back of his neck stand on end.

“Bedelia said I should take you to town,” the Dragon-Man rumbles, not looking at him. His speech is slurred and difficult to understand. “She said you looked too suspicious to be in camp when the police arrive.”

Will has never actually spoken to the Dragon-Man before, only seen him from a distance, and he is none too happy to be making his acquaintance now. The Dragon makes him uneasy, his hunched form and subdued movements jarringly at odds with the bulky muscles that ripple under his clothing and the tattoos that cover every inch of exposed skin. There are red and white scales on his chest and limbs, sinewy wings on his back, curling horns on the side of his scalp, and talons over the knuckles of each finger. His teeth are sharp and his eyes move unnervingly slowly. He looks like a Dragon but moves like a dove, and he makes every muscle in Will’s body tense.

The Dragon’s life before the Maury Brothers is the subject of heated whispers, but Will prefers not to participate in the discussions. First, because he doesn’t need to hear the rumors to know what the Dragon is capable of, and second because he knows that whether the Dragon murdered a hundred people or never harmed a fly, it’s all beside the point. Will knows that no matter how dangerous the Dragon is, Bedelia will never remove him from the Maury Brothers as long as he keeps drawing crowds. He is a primary source of profit, and for that reason it doesn’t matter how many bodies he may or may not have dropped in his previous life. As far as Bedelia is concerned, the only number that counts is the one that comes with a dollar sign attached to it, and the Dragon rakes in more of those than any other act.

Will has been on the receiving end of Bedelia’s dubious mercy and he knows what she offers people: immunity and a turned cheek in exchange for labor and loyalty. To her, the Dragon is no more or less a killer than Will: he’s an employee, and employees are to be protected as long as they are helping her make money. Her moral compass is twisted, but she is steadfast in adhering to it. And so, the Dragon stays.

“Suspicious?” Will says, keeping his voice even. “Suspicious how?”

“You were talking to yourself about how you killed her,” the Dragon-Man responds slowly, “and you’re covered in blood.”

Will looks down at his body and realizes that the Dragon is right. His hands must have been restless in the night, as there are patches of dried blood all over his clothing, and his face is stiff where patches have started to flake away. His hands look like craquelure.

“Did Bedelia say when I could come back?” Will asks, and the Dragon shakes his head, his eyes still focused on the road.

“She said you should stay away until tomorrow,” he says, and Will’s fingers clench.

_Tomorrow? Where the hell am I supposed to stay until tomorrow? I don’t have any money on me, I don’t have any food or water. I don’t even-_

“Did you kill her, Will?”

Will suddenly becomes aware that the truck has stopped moving, and that the Dragon is staring at him.

“Did you _change_ her?”

A frisson of fear crawls up Will’s spine, and he knows that no matter how desperate his situation might be overnight, it will inevitably be safer than spending another moment in the presence of the Dragon. Will swallows, trying not to flinch under the man’s unnerving gaze.

“No,” he finally manages to say. “No, I didn’t kill her.”

The Dragon frowns, his face falling, and he looks away. “You can get out now,” he says gruffly, and even though they’re still in the far outskirts of town Will takes the opportunity to slide out of the truck. He’ll take his chances with the locals rather than spend another minute with the Dragon. If anyone asks, he’ll say he’s a migrant worker who got attacked on the road.

“I’ll find my own way back,” Will calls out before shutting the door, and the Dragon doesn’t respond. Will can’t help but be relieved when the truck immediately pulls away, despite the fact that he is stranded in the blazing heat of a Texas late-summer with no money and nowhere to go. He thinks of the weeks he spent imagining his time in Fort Worth, his visions of stimulating conversation with Roman followed by several rounds of his particular brand of fucking. Instead, he’s spent his time here hot, dusty, thirsty, tired, and alone, and now he’s caked in dried blood and stumbling down a dirt road with no idea what he’s going to do for the next twenty-four hours. He thinks it’s a good lesson in the folly of hope.

He makes his way down the packed-soil road slowly, turning his collar up against the sun and trying to ignore the pounding in his head. He stiffens when he hears the sound of a vehicle rumbling up behind him, and his fists clench when it pulls to a stop alongside him. He turns to tell the person to fuck off, but the words die on his tongue. The car door pops open, and Roman Fell leers at him from the driver’s seat.

“Going my way?”

 

 

\---

 

 

Will listens to the sound of running water and studies the paintings lining the walls. The room feels like one great smear of soft color and saturated lighting, hemmed in on all sides by framed reproductions of various Impressionist and Romantic artworks. The selection manages to be cliche and inoffensive yet simultaneously self-congratulatory, conveying a familiarity with art but an utter lack of real appreciation for it. Will rolls his eyes at a Renoir and wanders down a landscape-lined hallway, slipping into a room filled with bookshelves. There is a desk situated at the far end of the room, and on it he sees a picture of a smug-looking man in a hideous jacket shaking hands with FDR. He lifts his eyes to the wall behind the desk and sees various degrees and awards, all bearing the name “Frederick Chilton.” He steps away from the desk when he hears Roman move into the room.

“You said this guy is your friend?” Will asks, making no attempt to hide his disdain. Based on what he’s seen of his living space, Will can hardly imagine voluntarily speaking to the man, let alone being his friend. Roman looks exceedingly amused by the question.

“Oh, Frederick and I have a long history,” he says breezily. “He is not the most… compelling man, but he has his uses.”

Will moves closer to a bookshelf and finds an alarmingly large section devoted to phrenology, the spine of every book cracked and worn from frequent use. “Phrenology?” he asks incredulously. “Wasn’t that pseudo-science abandoned eighty years ago?”

Roman’s face spreads into a grin. He looks delighted. “Come, Will,” he says. “I’ve drawn you a bath.”

Will follows after him, taking in more ostentatious furniture and bland paintings of beautiful places and people. “What did you say this guy does for a living?”

“He runs the sanatorium here,” Roman answers, gesturing him through an open doorway. “He started his career in New England, but it seems his methods were a little… amoral for the medical community there. Thankfully the oil barons of Texas seem to have no such scruples.”

Will looks around the bathroom and takes in the sight of the massive claw-foot bathtub filled with steaming water. “And you’re sure he doesn’t mind us using his place?” he asks, looking down at his filthy body.

“Not in the slightest,” Roman replies. “Frederick is currently out of town and will be gone for quite some time. He’s graciously lent me the use of his home until he returns.” He leans against the wall and gives Will a curving smile. “We are on our own.”  

Will feels a flare of heat in his low belly and looks away, suddenly shy. He unbuttons his bloody shirt and slides it off his shoulders, dropping his pants and socks shortly after. He can feel Roman’s eyes on his back and ass, his gaze like fingers as it drags over his skin. It gives him goosebumps. He steps into the water and hisses at the heat.

“Is the temperature to your liking?” Roman asks, and Will hides a grin.

“I’ve had better,” he says, a tremendous lie, and he lowers himself so that his body is submerged. The water is searingly hot, near to burning his skin, and it feels incredible. It also helps to stem his growing erection, which is an added bonus. He dips his head beneath the water and holds it there for several seconds, luxuriating in the feeling of being utterly entombed. When he surfaces again Roman is on his knees at the back of the tub, watching him with a small smile. He’s removed his jacket and unbuttoned the top buttons of his shirt, and his sleeves are rolled up to his elbows. Will swallows and tries to resist the urge to climb out of the tub and seat himself across his thighs.   

“Tilt your head back,” Roman says after a moment, and Will complies, closing his eyes. He feels the sensation of a cool liquid spreading in his hair, followed by the press of fingers kneading through it, rubbing his scalp with firm, soothing strokes. Will resists the urge to moan. The touch is hypnotic, spreading through his limbs like a sedative. Roman presses his head away from the lip of the tub and Will can’t suppress a groan as water pours over his forehead and down the back of his neck. Roman releases him and Will sits up, keeping his eyes closed. “Give me your arm, please,” Roman murmurs, and Will extends his hand. Working gently, Roman scrubs his skin with a soapy washcloth, starting from the shoulder and working his way down. When he reaches Will’s wrist he pauses, and Will opens his eyes to see him inspecting his palm.

“I cut myself on scrub brush,” he says, flexing his fingers. Roman brushes a thumb over the incisions.

“What were you doing?” Roman asks softly, moving to his other arm.

“Looking for an animal,” Will says, shifting his gaze to the soapy water. He thinks about their conversation in Odessa, their brief talk about the murder, and wonders if Roman would still want to fuck him if he knew more about Will’s questionable mental state. Will has never told anyone the full truth about his visions, the extent of the horror to which he becomes a first-row witness, and he finds himself once again desperate to do so. The desire to be understood is like a moth beating its wings against his ribcage, threatening to shatter his bones.

“And did you find it?” Roman asks, sliding the washcloth over Will’s shoulders. Will’s heart pounds in his throat, and he decides to risk the truth.

“There was never any animal to find,” he says unevenly. “I heard something that wasn’t there. I see things that aren’t there. I lose track of where I am and what I’m doing and mistake hallucinations with reality. It happens to me a lot. It happened the first day we met.”

Roman is silent behind him, but instead of stiffening and drawing away, spooked by Will’s abrupt confession, he gently presses Will forward so that he can scrub his back beneath the water.

“What sorts of things do you see?” he asks, and Will is so relieved by the genuine curiosity in his voice that he laughs.

“Oh, dead people and murders, mostly,” he replies, and Roman draws in a breath. Will’s tongue staggers forward, desperate to share his secret before the man tries to silence him. “I can get into the minds of killers. When I see a corpse, I know exactly how they died. I become their killer. I see through their eyes, hear their thoughts in my head, go through their motions with my body. More than that, _I understand them_.” Roman scoots the stool so that he is facing Will’s front, his eyes gleaming.

“Is that how you knew about the roustabout in Odessa?” he asks, his voice low. “By imagining yourself as his killer?” Will nods shortly, looking away.

“I slit his throat and let him bleed beside Bedelia’s trailer,” he says in a whisper. “And then I cut out his kidney and left him as an warning and a mockery all in one. I was proud of myself for what I’d done.”

Roman is still bathing him, dragging the washcloth over Will’s pectorals and down the plane of his stomach.

“I did it again this morning,” Will says, his voice uneven. “I suffocated a woman in her tent and cut out a piece of her thigh. Then I poured a glass of wine and thought about how much I enjoy putting Bedelia du Maurier’s sins on display. By the time I came back to reality Bedelia had kicked me out of camp because I looked completely crazy.” Will lets out a stuttered breath.

_There,_ he thinks, _it’s out._ _I can’t take it back_. He sits frozen, waiting to to be harangued with hesitant words of pity or admonishment, but instead Roman’s mouth curves into a smile.

“You’re not crazy, Will,” he says, drawing one of Will’s legs out of the water and sliding the washcloth up the length of his thigh. “You have a vivid imagination, coupled with a great deal of empathy.” He pauses, licking his lips. “What I wouldn’t give to see the world through your eyes.”

Will can’t help but let out a startled laugh at the words. Roman meets his gaze and lifts his eyebrows.

“You don’t believe me, Will?” he asks, and Will shakes his head, still grinning.

“Oh sure, I believe you,” he says, “that just… isn’t the response I was expecting.”

“And what response were you expecting?”

“Ah, something along the lines of ‘Thanks for the lay in Odessa, but now I need you to get the fuck away from me,’” Will says. He can’t seem to wipe the stupid grin off his face, his relief at being spared the expected rejection making him feel giddy.

Roman returns Will’s second leg to the water. He slides his hand towards Will’s groin, his lips curling.

“I will say no such thing,” he says. “I very much enjoyed our time in Odessa, and I’m looking forward to doing it again, if the offer still stands.” He brushes the backs of his fingers against Will’s cock, which has been fully erect since around the time Roman started washing his hair. He meets Will’s gaze with a leer. “It would appear that it’s still standing,” he says, and he rises from his place by the tub in a fluid movement. Will is so distracted by his ruminations and the surge of arousal that it takes him several moments to respond.

“Did you just make a pun?” he asks, somewhat incredulous, and Roman grins at him over his shoulder as he dries off his arms.

“Take as much time to finish your bath as you like, Will,” he says cheerfully. “I’m going to prepare our dinner.”

 

\---

 

 

Will stares at the stemmed glass on the table in front of him, swirling it gently and watching the red liquid undulate within. A rich, jammy taste clings to the roof of his mouth. He’s wearing one of Frederick’s silk dressing gowns, the fabric cool and luxuriant against his skin. The absurdity of the current situation has not escaped him, but he finds himself far too comfortable to care.

“Loin with a Cumberland sauce of red fruits,” Roman says as he enters the dining room, carrying two plates and setting one down in front of Will. Will studies it and thinks that it looks like a work of art.

“Green beans?” he asks, shocked. “Where did you get these? Fresh vegetables aren’t exactly easy to come by.”

“ _Haricot verts_ ,” Roman says primly, settling himself at the table. “Not green beans, _haricot verts_. And as for where I got them: every chef is entitled to keep his sources a secret.” He gives Will a small smile before he begins to cut the meat on his plate.

“I’ll keep your secrets if you keep mine,” Will says with a smirk, and then he takes a bite of his own loin. Roman watches him from across the table, his eyes fixated on Will’s mouth as he chews. Will has to suppress a moan. He’s been surviving on gruel, dry bread, and salt pork for what feels like an eternity. To him, the loin tastes like a delicacy beyond imagining. However, he’s never been one for effusive praise, so once he has swallowed the morsel and washed it down with wine he merely says, “Where did you learn to cook like this?”

Roman, seemingly satisfied with Will’s response, settles back in his chair to resume eating.

“Paris,” he says nonchalantly. “I taught myself to cook while I attended medical school there.”

Will’s fork clatters to his plate. “Paris?” he repeats. “Medical school? You’re a doctor?” Roman pauses with a piece of loin halfway to his mouth.

“Indeed I am” he answers, setting his fork down. “I’ve often thought of setting up a practice in America, but I understand there is great deal of antipathy in the general population toward the idea of foreigners.”

“So if you’re not here to start a medical practice, then why did you come to America?” Will asks. Roman takes another sip of wine and studies him before answering.

“ _Quid pro quo_ , Will. Why did you join the Maury Brothers?”

Will picks up his fork again and pushes a green bean - no, a _haricot vert_ \- across his plate. “Because I had nowhere else to go,” he says simply. Roman lets out a thoughtful hum.

“I have been to America many times, but I’ve spent the last several years in Europe,” he says, “where I made the acquaintance of an American woman. We became partners, and when she returned to the United States I came to settle some business with her.”

A thought occurs to Will. “Were you in the War?” he asks.

“You have a remarkable mind, and yet you let it torment you instead of using it as a tool to better enjoy your life. Have you ever considered advanced schooling? Or a job that might allow you to utilize your mind in some way?”

Will swallows down a sharp pulse of bitterness. “Many times,” he says. “I've always had the _will_ to do just that. What I lack is the _way_.” Roman stares at him from across the table. When Will meets his eyes, he feels like a butterfly pinned to a board. He finds that he likes it.

“I was in the War,” Roman replies, “as a medical officer. I was given a medal for my service, although I more often felt like a ripper than a surgeon.”

“What did you think of the War?”

“What did you think of the second murder? Do you think the same killer performed both?”

Will licks his lips and nods. “Yeah, same killer for both victims,” he says. “He’s highly experienced, and to him what he’s doing at the Maury Brother’s is child’s play. It’s a game to him, the whole point of it is just to use the murders as a means of exposing what he sees as Bedelia’s bad behavior. He’s sophisticated, and brutally intelligent, and he has a very dark sense of humor.”

Roman’s face curves into a smile. “The War made me think that killing must feel good to God, as he does it all the time.”

“Did you kill people?”

“Have you killed anyone, Will?”

Will’s breath draws short and his heart thunders in his chest. This conversation feels like a duel, a delicate dance of give and take. He wants to tell the truth, but he also fears the consequences of sharing too much truth. He looks down at his plate, and the red sauce suddenly looks like blood.

“Yes,” he says at length. “I have.”

“Look at me, Will,” Roman says gently, and Will does, lifting his eyes. Roman’s gaze is clear, but it shows no sign of horror or disgust at Will’s confession. Instead, his eyes are riveted on Will’s face. “As have I. Why did you kill them?”

Will swallows convulsively, pressing his palms against his knees and drawing in a shuddering breath. He doesn’t understand why he’s so desperate to tell the story. “Because he killed his daughter,” he grits out, staring at his wine glass and remembering the crimson pool of blood that surrounded the little girl like a halo. “He wanted to protect her, so he killed her.”

“What was he trying to protect her from, Will?”

“He was in debt,” Will stammers. “He owed a lot of money to the wrong kind of people. They came to his house and he killed them, but he knew they’d just send more. He knew that even if he died, they’d come after his daughter next. So he killed her to set her free.”

“And you know this because you imagined yourself killing her?”

Will nods, short and sharp. “Yes,” he whispers. “I imagined myself cutting her throat and leaving her there to bleed out.”

“And you killed her father as an act of revenge?” Roman asks. He is perched on the edge of his seat, leaning closer to Will across the table. His eyes are still riveted on Will’s face.

“Why did you bring me here, Doctor Fell?” Will asks abruptly, not bothering to soften the sharpness in his tone. “ _Quid pro quo:_ why not find yourself another guy like Frederick Chilton to fuck?” Roman licks his lips.

“Frederick Chilton is a sniveling pencil-licker,” he says in a low voice, “and I have no interest in men like him. I brought you here because you and I are just alike, Will.”

Will’s mouth curves into a twisted smile. “Just alike?” he echoes. “How do you figure that? The way I see it, you’re a European war-hero-turned-doctor. You’re clearly wealthy, or at least used to living like you are. You’re well educated, cultured. You’ve traveled the world. I’m an engine mechanic. I’m poor. Until a year ago I’d never been beyond Louisiana state lines. I’m not well educated. Everything I know about the world came from a book. I’m not sure we’re ‘just alike’ at all.”

Roman pushes his plate back and folds his hands on the table, his eyes focused on Will. “Was it self-defense when you killed him, Will?”

Will’s fingers flex, and he forces himself to meet Roman’s eyes again. “To a point,” he says slowly. “But beyond that point, it was murder.”

Roman draws in a breath. “You and I are just alike because we want the same thing, Will: we both want you to have a paddle to steer you out of dark places when your mind takes you there.”

Will’s hands begin to shake. “And are you offering to be that paddle?” he asks quietly.

“You said you joined the Maury Brothers because you had nowhere else to go. I assume this was right after you murdered the man who killed his daughter. Why not report the murder to the police and blame it on the hired men? Why uproot your life?”

Will feels like he is laid out on an operating table with his gut spread open, like Roman is examining the inky darkness that lives inside him with a clinical curiosity.

“ _Because I liked killing him_ ,” Will whispers with a shudder, admitting it both to Roman and to himself. “I’ve never felt more alive than I did while I was killing him.” Roman is utterly still.

“I can be your paddle, Will,” he murmurs. Will meets his gaze, feeling a flush cover his cheeks, and Roman smiles.

Will can’t bring himself to speak. He feels like he is living through that night all over again, stumbling through the darkness outside Hobbs’ hunting shack, clutching a gun to his chest and seeing the image of the little girl with her throat cut on the inside of his eyelids. He only meant to force Hobbs to turn himself into the police. But when he got there, when he saw him covered in his daughter’s blood, unrepentant and unafraid, Will couldn’t stop himself from pulling the trigger. Again, and again, and again.

Roman shifts forward in his chair, his eyes focused on Will’s face with rapt attention.

“Don’t go inside, Will,” he murmurs. “Stay with me.”

Will wants to ask where else he would go, but he doesn’t. He studies Roman’s face: his pursed lips, his golden skin, the delicate wrinkles fanning out around the edges of his eyes.

“You sure you want to be my paddle?” he asks in a rough voice. “It won’t be a very easy job.”

Roman licks his lips and studies Will for a moment before he pushes his chair away from the table and rises in a fluid motion. He moves to stand by Will’s chair, running a hand through his still-damp hair and using the other to tilt Will’s face. Will meets his eyes and feels his heartbeat in his throat as Roman leans forward and presses their lips together. It is only a chaste, gentle kiss, but it nonetheless leaves Will’s limbs tingling.

“I am sure, Will,” he says softly, pulling away. He stands, and gestures at Will’s plate. “Now finish your dinner.”

 

\---

 

Making love to Roman is no less overwhelming the second time around. If anything it is more so, as this time nothing is hidden between them. Rather than tumbling together on a small bedroll, this time they are spread out on the comfort of a large bed with golden evening sunlight illuminating the air around them. Where in Odessa their movements had been shrouded by a veil of darkness, there are no barriers between them now, no secrets hidden by the cover of night. Will can see the man beneath him in full: his broad shoulders, the grace of his long legs, the strength in his arms, the sturdy column of his powerful chest, and he knows that he can be seen in turn. He sees the way that Roman looks at him, the way his gaze hovers on his eyes and his lips, his collarbones and the thin skin of his throat. He wants to study Roman like an oil painting, to search his cracks and seams and sort out an answer to the puzzle.

Roman is wealthy, cultured, and well-traveled, so why is he wasting his time in the epicenter of the Dust Bowl? The Plains States have nothing to offer anyone but jilted evangelism, oil wells, and an endless expanse of barren fields. What brought him here? Certainly the woman he is seeking (Will shivers with a sudden thrill of jealousy) is in New York, or Chicago, or Philadelphia, brightly-lit cities where someone with money can find easy ways to make more of it. So what is he doing here, spread out on a bed in Fort Worth, luminous and panting beneath Will’s steady ministrations?

“If I am to be your paddle, Will, there must be no secrets between us,” Roman manages to say, his breath uneven. Will presses his face into the curve of Roman’s neck and takes a deep breath of his spicy, clean scent. He bites gently at the meat of Roman’s shoulder, and Roman gasps.

_Secrets_ , Will thinks. _He wants to know my secrets._

Here is a secret: Will can be a spider too. He can be a horrible, terrifying thing, and he’s overwhelmed by the sudden urge to show it, to pull the veil away from the eyes of this polished, pristine war-hero-turned-surgeon and bring him face-to-face with the ugliness that Will lives and breathes every single day, to make him understand just what he is asking for when he asks for Will’s secrets.

“You seem awfully concerned that I’m keeping secrets from you,” he murmurs into Roman’s ear. A shudder runs through the other man’s body. “Does that make you Bluebeard? Does that make me Bluebeard’s wife?” he asks. His hand maintains its steady grip, his movements eased by the slickness of petroleum jelly. Roman’s cock is as thick and heavy as he remembers, and it twitches beneath his fingers. Will presses his lips against Roman’s ear as he moves his hand, stroking him with a firm, smooth rhythm.

“To the truth, then,” Will breathes, “and all its consequences.” Roman meets his gaze, his eyes glazed with pleasure, and Will smiles.

“Some days I feel like a darkness comes in to me, like it crawls down my throat and takes root in my stomach, _and I like it_.” Roman lets out a deep groan as Will twists his fingers, rubbing his thumb over the top of the exposed head where it strains up out of his foreskin.  “You asked me what I thought about the second murder,” Will murmurs, remembering the question at dinner, how he hadn’t told the whole truth. Roman inhales sharply. “I thought it was beautiful.” Roman’s eyes are closed, his head tilted back and his eyelids fluttering. Will continues to stroke him in fast, steady movements, and he can tell by the man’s ragged breathing, by the way his long thighs are tensed and his broad fingers clench the quilt beneath him, that he is close to climax. “Do you want to know the truth about what I think about the killer?” Will whispers, pressing a kiss to his earlobe. Roman’s feet press into the mattress, lifting his hips higher, rutting himself into Will’s hand.

“Yes,” he chokes out, “yes.”

“I think he turns death into art,” Will murmurs, and he smiles when Roman comes beneath him, watching as the man’s face tenses in a haze of pleasure and his cock pulses in Will’s grip. Will is both sickened and aroused by what he’s done, by the knowledge that he successfully forced the man to come while whispering words about the darkness that infects Will’s mind. But Roman doesn’t seem to be angry, and he doesn’t push Will away. He lays still for several moments, drawing in deep, uneven breaths while Will wipes his hand and hesitantly reapplies petroleum jelly to his fingers. He isn’t sure whether Roman wants to continue until he reaches to pull Will between his thighs.

Will is astounded, his heart beating in his throat, wondering how it’s possible that the man isn’t furious at him, how it’s possible that Roman seems to have enjoyed what happened just as much as Will did. He wants to cleave himself to Roman, to climb into his body and become an additional limb. He wants to tie himself to the steadfast anchor of his cool, inscrutable smile, and let himself float forever in his orbit. He wants to never be parted from him. He wants to love him, and be loved by him. He wants, he wants, he wants. He moves trembling fingers down to circle Roman’s entrance, his body crackling with arousal, and he meets Roman’s gaze with a shudder. He opens him gently and slowly, listening to the ragged breaths of the man beneath him, the way he lets out a guttural moan as Will’s fingers seek and find what they are looking for. Will continues to touch him, probing and methodical, until the man is wet and open and he is fully erect again.

“Will,” he finally pants, his voice trembling, “please.”

Will has no response to that but to lift his legs and slide inside of him, feeling a charge of electricity surge from his core outward to the very tips of his fingers and toes. For a moment he can’t move, his body held hostage by the dizzying pleasure that is only partially due to the sex. He feels bared; stripped clean, all of his dirty sockets and crevices washed free of debris and replaced with white-hot heat. Will draws in a shuddering breath, his skin thrumming with electricity beneath Roman’s touch. He feels like all of his gnarled roots and broken branches have been stripped away and all that remains is green, new growth. He can’t believe it. He has shown the worst of himself to another person, and he hasn’t been pushed away. He feels, for the first time in his life, like he is accepted. Understood. Desired. Loved. _Anchored._ The sensation is intoxicating. He feels like he might float away, his whole being transformed into energy and released out into the air. It’s not until Roman’s hand moves to grip his over the quilt that Will begins to move, threading their fingers together and unable to suppress a quiet whine.

“God,” he breathes, unable to prevent the words from tumbling out of his mouth, “all these years, where have you been?”

“Nowhere better than here,” Roman murmurs, canting his hips higher and tightening his grip on Will’s fingers. Will lets out a choked groan. He feels effervescent, like the sparking energy inside him is bubbling out of the surface of his skin, and he lifts his hand to Roman’s low back, pressing him closer, trying to pour some of that searing heat out of him and into the man beneath him.

Will can be a spider too, and his steady thrusts build a web of pleasure so that once again there is nothing in the world but the heat between them, nothing but the sound of their breath and the way their bodies seem to speak to one another through the dusk. Will loses all sense of time as they move together, wonders if there was ever a time when they weren’t locked in this embrace.  He has never felt so peaceful, nor so safe. He wants to stay like this forever, and he nearly sobs at the knowledge that he can’t.

“How am I going to find you again when this is all over?” he whispers, his words unrecognizable to his own ears, his deepest fear given voice.

“I’ll find you, Will,” Roman chokes out, his face and chest flushed, “I’ll always find you.”

Will comes with a muffled cry, his body quaking. He catches himself on one arm and uses the other to reach blindly and grip Roman’s cock in a shaking hand, and after three firm tugs he feels spurts of hot moisture hit his stomach and chest. He feels the way that Roman has gone stiff beneath him, and he holds himself above him, wary of crushing him when he is oversensitive. But Roman pulls Will to his chest and wraps him in his arms like a vise, pressing kisses to his hair and face and breathing his name. Will can’t seem to stop trembling. Will lifts his head to meet Roman’s gaze and finds that his eyes are gleaming. He touches Will’s face with something like awe.

“With all my knowledge and intrusion,” he murmurs, “I could never have predicted you.”

 

\---

 

 

Will opens his eyes to the sight of Roman gazing at him from the other side of the bed. He has no memory of falling asleep, no memory of nightmares or fevered dreams. He is dry, and warm, and unnervingly happy.

“Have you ever been in love, Will?” Roman asks, and Will huffs out a throaty laugh. What a painfully appropriate question.

“I’m not sure I even know what that means,” he lies. He does know what it means; he learned it last night as he and Roman moved together in the fading daylight. It was, and is, a bitter pill to swallow. Roman reaches out and brushes a curl away from his forehead.

“Are you being purposefully evasive, Will?” he asks, and Will licks his lips.

_Yes_ , he thinks. He has no intention of humiliating himself by telling the truth, not until he’s given some indication that his feelings are reciprocated.

“I spent last winter in Tallahassee,” he says slowly, “it’s where Bedelia dropped us until the season picked up again. There was a woman there, Molly Foster. We spent a lot of time together, and she…” Will bites his lip, and Roman’s hand stops moving through his hair. “She made me feel normal. As normal as I’m ever likely to feel, anyway. Steady. Like I could make a go of it, fishing and taking walks with her dogs. I’ve thought about trying to find her when the season ends this year. I’m still not sure I won’t.”

Roman makes a thoughtful sound and traces his fingers along Will’s jaw, pressing against a tender spot of skin on his throat. Will wonders if it’s bruised. Will wonders if any of the words that he and Roman whispered in last night's web of pleasure have any meaning here in the morning sunlight.

“Anyone else?” he asks, and Will shakes his head.

“No,” he whispers. “No-one else.”

“I see.”

Roman slides his hand to Will’s shoulder, moving towards him. He has a look of intense concentration in his eyes.

“Well,” he murmurs, covering Will’s body with his own,“let’s see if we can take her off your mind, shall we?”

Will is heaving and breathless by the time Roman releases him, his limbs tingling from climax and his ass twinging from pleasant soreness. Roman kisses him on the forehead.

“You are welcome to rinse off if you’d like,” he murmurs in a husky voice. “I’ll make us breakfast.”

Will finds his clothes clean and folded in the bathroom, and he realizes that Roman must have washed them sometime during the night. It seems an oddly intimate gesture. Will scrubs himself clean of sweat and dried come and washes his hair, toweling off and slipping into his familiar clothing. It feels like the first step in crossing back into his real life, his dark, dirty, lonely, miserable real life, and he swallows around the lump in his throat. By the time he reaches the kitchen Roman has already set the table, and Will sits down to a meal of scrambled eggs, ham, and biscuits. Will knows that this is likely his last meal for a long time that’s actually worth eating, so he does his best to clear his plate despite the rock that has lodged itself in his stomach. Roman is quiet as well, chewing his food with a furrowed brow.

“Will,” he says at length, after they’ve both finished eating and are sitting in a heavy silence. “What if you didn’t return to Florida when the season ends?” He pauses, licks his lips, and Will is shocked to realize that he looks nearly nervous. “What if you left the Maury Brothers and came with me?”

Will feels his heart jackrabbit in his chest, and he draws in a shaky breath. “I don’t think you know me well enough to make me that kind of offer,” he says. His lips stumble over the words, the animal part of his brain threatening to stall them before they reach the open air. His sense of logic is at war with his deep-rooted, desperate longing for companionship, his longing to crawl back in that web and never come out again.

“Will,” Roman says, leaning forward in his chair and tapping his fingers against the tablecloth. “There is nothing you could reveal about yourself that would make me change my mind.”

Will feels his eyebrows crawl towards his hairline, and he resists the urge to laugh. Bitterness and heartache tumble over one another in his chest.

“Okay then, Doctor, let me test that theory. I grew up in a part of Louisiana that was so remote I only went to school for six years. What do you think of that?”

Roman’s fingers keep moving, looking like they want to inch across the table.

“I think it is yet another sign of the depth of your natural intelligence, that you were able to educate yourself so beautifully despite many obstacles.”

Will feels himself blush, and he looks away. “Okay, how about this: I have maybe three dollars to my name and the clothes on my back. That’s all I have in the world. And you’re okay with that?”

Roman pushes his plate away and folds his hand on the table. “Absolutely. Money is no concern to me, Will.”

Will presses his palm against his mouth, trying to suppress the flutter of hope that is rising in his chest.

“And you wouldn’t be embarrassed? Going back to Europe, or wherever it is you plan to go next, and having to explain to people why you’re wasting your time with an American roughneck?”

“I wouldn’t be wasting my time, Will. It would be an honor and a privilege to have you by my side.”

“Okay, and what about the fact that we’d be two men living together? A lot of people don’t look too kindly on that particular arrangement.”

“There are parts of the world where people are more enlightened in their views than the United States, Will,” Roman says firmly. “And rest assured that should anyone choose to speak out against us, they would be dealt with.”

Will exhales a shaking breath, his heart pounding in his chest. The flutter of hope has become a windstorm.

“Even after everything I told you last night, you still think it’s a good idea to take me with you?” he asks, breathless.

“Yes,” Roman says simply, firmly, and Will’s body hums at the sound. “Will you join me, Will?” Roman asks, and Will shakes his head, still unable to believe what he is hearing.

“Why are you doing this?” he asks, refusing to meet Roman’s eyes. “What could you possibly get from me that you can’t get from a hundred other, better people?”

Roman’s brows crease. “I don’t want a hundred other people, Will,” he says firmly. “I want you and your unique way of seeing the world. I want to help you reach your potential.”

“My potential?” Will echoes, his mind racing with a heady combination of adrenaline and anticipation, and Roman hums.

“Like a butterfly emerging from a chrysalis,” he murmurs, and Will would laugh at the pompousness of the statement if he didn’t feel like his heart was going to beat out of his chest. Roman seems unable to stay seated any longer, rising from his chair and circling the table to kneel beside Will’s chair.

“Give me three weeks, Will,” he murmurs, taking Will’s hand, “three weeks to make the necessary arrangements, and then you can turn your back on the Maury Brothers and never think of it again.”

Will stares at him, tries to imagine a world where there is an end in sight to the toil and despair that has characterized his life for over thirty years. And not just an end, but an escape: an escape into a reality that won’t drive Will to the edges of his sanity, an escape to a reality where he has a paddle and an anchor to prevent him from capsizing in his own mind. The idea is so powerful that Will finds he can’t speak. He has never been so happy.

“Three weeks, Will,” Roman repeats, moving one hand to tilt Will’s jaw towards his face and the other to cup the back of his skull. “Are we agreed?”

“Yeah,” Will murmurs, his hands lifting and pressing into the muscle of Roman’s shoulders. “We’re agreed.”

Roman lets out a shuddering breath and grips him more tightly.

“You’ll be in Oklahoma City then, correct?” he asks, and Will nods.

“We’ll be in Oklahoma City for two weeks,” he says, and Roman pulls his head away to look down at him.

“I will give you the address of a house in Oklahoma City where you can meet me,” he says. “When the circus packs up to leave, do not go with them. Meet me there. Can you do that for me, Will?” he asks, his voice firm.

“Yeah, I can do that,” Will whispers.

Roman kisses him, cupping his face and pressing his tongue into his mouth. “Good, Will,” he murmurs, moving his lips to gnaw at the skin of Will’s throat like an animal dying of hunger. “Good.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks so much to everyone who kudosed and commented on the last chapter! I really appreciate it! :)
> 
> Also: anyone have any guesses about what's on Hannibal's three week to-do list? ;)
> 
> Thanks for reading!


	3. Oklahoma City

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In this chapter: Will receives some ominous advice from an unexpected source, Margot says goodbye, and Bedelia tells Will the "truth" about Hannibal Lecter. AKA, ANGST. A whole lot of angst.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay everyone, this is it! These last two chapters are my favorite, so I'm really excited to share them with you. Fair warning: there is a lot of angst in Chapter 3, so be ready. 
> 
> If you like your fic to be angsty and open-ended, then feel free to stop reading after Chapter 3. Otherwise, Chapter 4 will give you the "angst-with-a-happy-ending" tag content :). (And also Hannibal's POV.) Reader's choice!
> 
> Once again, thanks so much to everyone who has kudosed and commented! I had a lot of fun writing this fic, and it makes me so happy that there are folks out there who enjoyed reading it.
> 
> Enjoy!

 

  

III. Oklahoma City

  

_Will wakes to the feeling of a hand pressing his shoulder. He opens his eyes, his body tense, but he relaxes when he sees that it is only the little girl. She holds a finger in front of her lips, signalling him to be silent, and then she waves her hand toward her face. “Follow me,” she seems to say. And so Will does, rising from his bedroll and dropping down behind her as she exits the truck and makes her way to the camp. She leads him into one of the big-tops, empty now in the middle of the night, and in the center Will sees a man hunched over the bodies of the dead roustabout and the peep show dancer. Will feels with an electrifying certainty that the man is their killer, and he steps closer, desperate to get a glimpse of his face, desperate to know the truth behind the bloodshed that’s haunted his dreams for weeks. But then the figure turns, and Will realizes it’s not a man at all, but only an antlered shadow._

 

Will comes to in the cavernous darkness of a circus tent, his feet aching and his body covered with sweat and dust. A woman’s voice cuts through the fog in his mind and he draws in a breath, uncertain whether the voice is real or imagined.

 _Two more weeks until you see Roman again,_ he tells himself with a shudder, _two more weeks until you leave all this behind_.

The woman’s voice cries out again.

“Dee?” the voice asks. “Is that you, Dee?”

Will takes a step forward but pauses at the sight of a cane pressing through the entrance to the tent, followed by a slim-fingered hand and then the body of a woman. She is backlit by the electric lamps shining through the opening in the canvas, and Will recognizes her as Reba, the snake-charmer. She taps her cane in front of her body as she walks, her sightless brown eyes luminous in the muted light. She holds every part of herself poised and graceful.

“Dee?” she says again. “Dee, tell me if you’re there.”

Will stands frozen, caught like a mouse in the gaze of a hawk. His mind is still reeling from the dream, and he finds he can’t remember how to speak. He clears his throat, and Reba’s face falls.

“That isn’t Dee, is it?” she asks.

“Ah, no,” Will manages to say, his voice hoarse. “It’s Will Graham. We’ve never met.” 

Reba’s face curls into a smile then, and Will can understand why even snakes would be charmed by her. She seems to radiate goodness. 

“Are you the same Will Graham with the curly hair that the girls are always talking about?” she asks, her voice teasing, and Will huffs out a laugh.

“Maybe,” he says. “If so, they’re not talking to me about it.” 

Reba steps forward and extends her hand and Will takes it. Her grip is very strong.

“It’s great to finally meet you, Will Graham,” she says. “I’m Reba McClane. I charm snakes, of the animal and human variety.” She smiles again, her eyes gleaming at her joke, and Will huffs out another laugh. 

“Yeah, I’ve heard of you,” he says, and she smirks, releasing his hand. 

“Of course you have! Charmer like me? Everyone knows my name.” She smiles, but her shoulders belie her tension. Will opens his mouth to speak but she beats him to it. “I hadn’t expected to run into many people this time of night,” she says, “but since I did I have to confess: I didn’t just come out here to introduce myself to strangers.” She gives Will another small smile. “I’m looking for Dee - have you seen him?”

“Ah, Dee? I’m sorry, I don’t know who-” 

“Francis,” Reba says, blushing, “Francis Dolarhyde. You probably know him as the ‘Dragon-Man’,” she says with a grimace. “He usually comes by my trailer for dinner, but he didn’t tonight.” She pauses, bites her lower lip. “He’s been acting… strange lately. I’m a little worried about him.” 

Will blinks. He hasn’t seen hide nor hair of the Dragon since Fort Worth, and that’s fine by him.

“No, I haven’t seen him, I’m sorry,” he says. Reba’s brows crease, and the lines around her eyes betray her unease until her face is masked by another bright smile.

“Well, I thought I’d ask just in case,” she says. “If you see D- if you see Francis, can you tell him that I’m looking for him? I’d be mighty obliged if you did,” she says, tilting her head slightly and giving him another smile.

“Yeah, yeah I’ll do that,” Will says awkwardly, and she clasps her hands in front of herself. 

“Thank you, Will,” she says, and then she falls silent. She holds herself very still, and Will is struck with the sudden sense that she is studying him. She taps her fingers against her cane. “I know it’s not my place to ask, but I’m going to do it anyway,” she says. “What are you doing out here this time of night, Will? Looking for things that go bump in the night?” 

Will lets out a choked laugh, and she gives him a small smile. “Ah, you could say that,” he says slowly.

“Out hunting for monsters?” she asks in a teasing voice, and Will stiffens. 

“Not much need to hunt them,” he says honestly. “They generally find me.”

“Have you met a lot of monsters?” she asks, and Will’s fingers twitch.

“More than I prefer,” he says slowly, and she lets out a wry laugh.

“I know that people think D- think Francis is a monster,” she says evenly, “but I don’t believe it. Do you believe it?”

Will draws in a tight breath.

“It doesn’t matter what I believe,” he says slowly, and Reba gives him an inscrutable smile. 

“Do you think he’s a freak, Will?” she asks frankly.

“I think he’s a man with a freak on his back,” Will says carefully, and Reba hums.

“I don’t feel any sympathy from you,” she says. “I like that. Sympathy is like spit on my face, and I don’t do self-pity. You’re the first person I’ve ever talked to about Dee who actually told me what they really think.”

Will clears his throat. “Well, you deserve better than a lie,” he says, and her mouth curves into another small smile.

“So do you, Will, so I’m going to be honest with you. Whatever monster it is that has you out here in the middle of the night, stumbling around in the dark, make sure you’re ready for what happens when you find it.”

Will stands frozen, so stunned by her words that he is unable to respond. Reba gives him one last, radiant smile.

“It was wonderful to meet you,” she says, and Will watches her turn and make her way out of the shadowy tent with her cane and her free hand extended. He stands and stares after her long after she’s gone.

 

\---

 

Will dreams he is bathing in a copper tub filled with blood. An antlered shadow sits at his shoulder, rubbing blood over the pale white milk of his skin and pressing it through the tendrils of his hair, whispering in his ear. It brings its hand to Will’s throat and Will tilts his head back, and when the shadow cups its hand and draws the blood to his mouth Will opens his lips and swallows.

He wakes up in his grimy bedroll shaking and covered in sweat, the front of his shirt moist with semen and his body still tingling from orgasm. His pulse pounds in his throat, and he barely reaches the edge of the truck bed before he vomits. His heart cries out for Roman, his body yearning for comfort and closeness to stave off the darkness that’s crowding in around the edges of his vision. He can’t sleep, he doesn’t dare try again, so he makes his way stumbling towards the water troughs at the center of the camp, hoping at the very least to clean himself off. The daughter-killer walks beside him, studying him thoughtfully.

“Will?” a voice calls, and Will stops. It’s Margot, standing in the entrance of her tent and smoking a cigarette.

“Oh look, you’re actually awake,” she says in a droll tone. Something in Will’s face must convince her to be merciful, as she extends her hand. “Come on,” she says, “I have water you can use to clean up.”

It’s only when they’re in Margot’s tent and Will is bent over a bucket that it occurs to him to ask why she is awake.

“I’ve been up,” she drawls. “I haven’t really been sleeping since Fort Worth, so I heard you. At first I thought our killer had come back but then I saw it was you. I thought you were sleepwalking again.” Will rubs a hand over his face.

“Thanks for checking on me, Margot,” he says, and Margot shrugs.

“Don’t mention it,” she murmurs. They’re both silent for several moments as Will scrubs the mess off his body and Margot idly paces the length of the small tent. “There’s something I should tell you,” she says finally, and her voice is so uncharacteristically hesitant that Will stops what he’s doing to look at her. She takes a drag of her cigarette and looks away. “I saw an ad in the paper for a job as a live-in housekeeper in Tulsa. Some widow named Alana Bloom needs help taking care of her son. I applied, and my offer was accepted. In two days, I’m leaving.” She clears her throat, shifting her weight on her slippered feet. “I’m not sure you care, but I wanted to tell you. You’ve been one of the only decent things about my time here.” 

Will blinks, caught between happiness for Margot and guilt that she’d thought to warn him of her impending departure when he hadn’t done the same for her.

“Thanks for telling me, Margot,” he says after a moment. “I’m happy for you, really.” She huffs out a quiet laugh and moves to sit at her vanity table. She drums her fingers on her thigh, her brow creased in thought, and Will realizes for the first time that she looks bone-weary.  

“When I left Maryland, I swore I’d do anything for any man that wasn’t my brother,” she says in her slow, low rasp. “I thought: nothing could be worse than what had already been done to me, so what did it matter what I did here? And for a while, I believed it.”

Will says nothing, letting her speak.

“But when I saw what that killer did to Joseph and Sarah, I thought - _that. That_ could be worse than what was done to me.” She draws in a shaking breath and takes a drag of her cigarette. “They say you catch more flies with honey than vinegar, but it’s a lie. You catch the most flies with shit, and boy are we are _rolling_ in it here. When I met Bedelia she promised she’d keep me safe from my brother as long as I worked for her. But she didn’t keep Sarah safe. She didn’t keep Joseph safe. Sarah hadn’t been dead for twenty-four hours before Bedelia came to our tents and told us to get ready for a show. In the end, she’s no better than my brother. People are just pigs to them both.”

Will thinks of Bedelia’s slim fingers clutching a wine glass, her calm fascination as Will told her in stuttering speech that he’d shot a man to death in Louisiana. He thinks that Margot is right. 

Margot’s hand is shaking on her thigh, and Will reaches across the small space between them to cover it gently with his own. She threads their fingers together and draws in a shaking breath, quickly brushing tears away from her eyes with the hand that holds the cigarette.

“What are you going to do about your brother?” he asks gently, and Margot visibly tenses.

“To be determined,” she says, her voice flinty. “I know he’s still looking for me. I’ll be a lot easier to find once I settle down. But I can’t stay here. I can’t.”

“Have you told Bedelia?” he asks, and Margot nods.

“Yeah, she said she’d give me my pay out after my last show,” she says, and her shoulders begin to shake. “Can you believe that? I’ve worked for her for three years, and that’s all she said. I might as well be a worn-out tire. Lose one, get another.” She chokes back a sob and Will moves to kneel beside her, sliding an arm around her shoulders.

“You’ll get away, Margot,” he says in a quiet voice. “Not everyone is like your brother and Bedelia.” He thinks of Roman, of his steady, calming grace and his gentle hands. “Not everyone is cruel.”

Margot draws in a shuddering breath and lets it out in a rush, wiping her nose with the back of her wrist. She is crying, but trying hard not to show it. 

“I think that’s the most optimistic thing I’ve ever heard you say,” she says, attempting levity through her tears.

Now it’s Will’s turn to bite his lip, to be uncertain how to proceed. “Do you remember that guy at the diner in Odessa?” he asks, and Margot nods, her tears slowing and her breath beginning to even out.

“I do. Why?”

Will flushes and looks away, unable to meet her gaze. “I’ve seen him a few times since then. A couple in Odessa, once in Fort Worth. We … make a good fit,” he says, trying and failing to think of a way to adequately convey the depth of feeling that Roman inspires in him. “He asked me to meet him in Oklahoma City at the end of the month to run away with him. I’m going to do it.”

Margot’s mouth falls open. “You sound like a drug store romance novel,” she says bluntly. Her voice is incredulous. Will huffs a quiet laugh.

“Yeah, well, ‘power of love’, I guess,” he says in a wry tone, and Margot gives him a wet-eyed grin.

“I wondered what was going on in Odessa. You… actually looked like you wanted to be alive,” she says, and she laughs when she sees him grimace. “I’m just being honest, Will. You haven’t looked exactly… happy in the time I’ve known you, so it’s noticeable when you are. When you came back to camp in Fort Worth it looked like you had an eighty-pound weight off your back. I thought, ‘So that’s what he really looks like.’” She stubs out her cigarette and clears her throat, wiping away the last of her tears. “Good for you, Will,” she says. “God knows you deserve it.”

Will squeezes her fingers gently. “Thanks, Margot,” he murmurs. She draws in a long breath and lets it out in a rush. They sit together in silence for several moments.

“I think my brother still expects me to show up at Muskrat Farm one day and beg him for forgiveness,” Margot says at length. She is very still. “He’s never known me as well as you do.”

Will looks up at her and holds her gaze. He knows what she wants to do.

“You’ll go back one day,” he says, “but not to beg forgiveness.”

Margot’s eyes shine. “No, not to beg forgiveness.”

“The traumatized are unpredictable because we know we can survive,” he says slowly, and Margot smirks.

“Don’t worry about me, Will,” she says. “I’ll survive him.” Will lets out a breath and withdraws his hand, moving back to the bucket in the corner.

“I know you will,” he says, and he begins to clean himself again as she lights another cigarette. She stares out into the night with a Cheshire smile.

“If at first you don’t succeed,” she says, “try, try again.”

 

 

\---

 

 

In the little boat on the sea that is Will’s mind, there is a chest where he keeps the thoughts and memories that are most precious to him. For much of his life, the chest was woefully empty. Will lived a hard life, raised in a remote part of Louisiana as the only child of a father who did the best he could. For much of Will’s childhood and adolescence the box contained only a handful of memories: learning to read, his father teaching him to fish, the way the moon looked reflected in the black waters of the bayou. Otherwise, the box was like Will’s life: quiet and, after his father died, empty. He knew that there were parts of himself that he couldn’t share with others, that there were parts of him that no-one would ever understand, and so he isolated himself. There were no true friends or lovers with whom he could fill his chest of precious things, only himself and his thoughts. It was a very lonely life.

After the daughter-killer’s death it began to fill with a different kind of memory: imagined memories of what his life might have been like had he made it to Garrett Jacob Hobbs’ home in time to prevent him from murdering his daughter. Will ruminated on what it would have been like to take the little girl into his care and raise her as his own daughter, to teach her how to fish and help her with her schoolwork. He would have felt an obligation to her for killing her father, but it would have been an obligation he cherished: an obligation that would have lent meaning to his life.

But in time, those dreams faded, and now the box is filling up with Roman. Will secrets away memories of Roman like treasures: the smell of his skin, the gentle firmness of his touch, the way he says Will’s name. He stores away the vision of Roman beneath him in Fort Worth, his face flushed with pleasure. He catalogs the words of every conversation they’ve had, and builds a shrine to Roman’s calm acceptance of the things Will has always been afraid to show people. He secrets away new imagined memories of his life with Roman: visions of a beatific world where he never has to hide the darker turns of his thoughts, never has to wonder if Roman would accept him if he knew the full truth of who Will is. He imagines traveling across Europe with Roman, seeing monuments and museums that he has only ever read about in books and newspapers. He imagines having conversations with Roman over dinner about the meaning of life and death, light and darkness, good and evil, and afterward finding their way to bed for a night of blissful love-making and peaceful, uninterrupted sleep.

In a matter of weeks Roman has become anchor, guidepost, and beacon in Will’s mind. He is the moon that pulls the tides, the sail on the boat and the lighthouse on the sea. Will cannot tell where he ends and Roman begins, and each day apart from him feels like an eternity.

And if Will’s hopes for the future blind him to the dangers that continue to surround him, to the _what ifs_ and _what abouts_ that stalk like wolves around the edges of his vision, then perhaps he prefers to be blind. He has questions about the killer who murdered Joseph and Sarah, questions about the antlered shadow that has invaded his dreams. He has fears about the limits of coincidence, doubts about the plausibility of fate. But he has not forgotten Reba’s warning: don’t go looking for monsters unless you’re ready for what happens when you find them. Will isn’t ready to find this monster. He doesn’t think he ever will be. He would rather sift through his chest of precious things than think too hard about where that breadcrumb trail would lead. And so, he chooses blindness. 

And maybe it is his voluntary blindness that leads him to that run-down barn in the middle of a grassy field, called by the light of the full moon and the fears that circle him like buzzards eyeing a fresh kill. Maybe it is that voluntary blindness that renders him incapable of noticing the Dragon until he is already upon him, lifting him in the air and hefting him against the crumbling wall of the barn as if he were made of nothing more than rags.

He has not gone hunting for his monster, but a monster has found him just the same.

Will can hear the Dragon roaring as the wall crumbles around him, asking Will who he is to Hannibal Lecter, what he was doing with Hannibal Lecter in Fort Worth, if he is ready to meld with the strength of the dragon, but he cannot see through the darkness. He coughs and sputters through the dust and the pain in his head and chest, listening as the Dragon rips away the boards that have fallen around him, listening as the Dragon raves about blood and breath and fuel for radiance, about reaching his potential, about butterflies emerging from a chrysalis. Will’s shaking hands close around a rusted polebarn nail just as the Dragon reaches him, and he clutches it tightly as the Dragon yanks him out from under the debris by his ankle and shoves a knife into the meat of his left shoulder. Will nearly faints from the pain but he doesn’t think, he just acts. He drives the nail into the Dragon’s neck and then into his eye. The Dragon roars, lurching away and clutching his face. Will does not hesitate, yanking the knife out of his shoulder and rolling to his feet.

A black shadow has crept in around the edges of Will’s vision, and his blood has turned to electricity. He feels like a force of nature: creator and destroyer. He feels glorious. He feels more alive than he has ever felt. 

Will is limping, but he is fast, and stronger than he looks. Will is small, but he is a spider, and his sting is sharp and deadly. He shoves the blade into the Dragon’s gut and wrenches it sideways, never faltering through the resistance of skin and flesh, never flinching from the wet slickness of viscera and gore that streams out around his hands. Will doesn’t step away until the Dragon has fallen to his knees, and then to his back, and the blood has spread out around him like wings. Somewhere, in the distant part of Will’s mind still capable of speech, he thinks that it is beautiful.

 

 

\---

 

 

When Bedelia enters her trailer Will is sitting at her small table, covered in blood and quaking. He watches her freeze before slowly closing the door behind her. He feels as though he is watching the scene from very far away. 

“Hello, Will,” she says smoothly, stepping to an armoire and withdrawing a stemmed glass and a bottle of wine. She places them on the table before settling into the chair across from him.

“Who’s Roman Fell?” Will chokes out, his voice rough and unrecognizable. He can’t stop his hands from shaking. He scrubbed them raw, but they still feel slick with blood and the insides of the Dragon’s gut. His shoulder is seeping blood through layers of bandages.

“Roman Fell was my lover,” Bedelia says, “and the curator of the Capponi Library in Florence.” She pauses and smooths her skirt. Will’s fingers clench involuntarily, and he stares in horror at the viscera that squelches between them.

“And?” he stutters. 

Bedelia studies his twitching hands before moving her gaze to his face. “And he’s dead,” she says. “He was murdered by a man named Hannibal Lecter in Paris. Hannibal intended to steal his identity.” She draws in a tight breath. “Hannibal said he wouldn’t kill me if I agreed to accompany him to Florence and pretend he had been Roman Fell all along. So I did.” 

Will looks up at the sound of movement in the corner and sees the daughter-killer smirking at him from the shadows.

 _See?_ He mouths through the lamplight. _See?_

The lighthouse in his mind is flickering, its beacon growing dim as the air fills with a cloying fog. Bedelia clears her throat, and Will looks back to her with a shudder.

“Roman Fell has ceased to exist in this world, Will,” she says. “The man you know as Roman Fell is not a person, he is a… person _suit_ worn by Hannibal Lecter. A mask. Hannibal Lecter killed Joseph and Sarah. He means to kill me as well. Although I suspect you already know that.”

Will is silent, staring hard at the polished surface of the table. There is a loud roaring in his ears, and it feels like someone has placed a metal clamp over his heart and tightened the handles.

“Have you heard of _Il Mostro di Firenze_ , Will?” Bedelia asks. “That’s another one of Hannibal’s masks. A serial killer who staged his murders to look like paintings by the Italian masters. News of his capture was published in American newspapers.”

Will presses his palm against his mouth. He had read the papers, seen the grainy photos of lush crime scenes laid out like tapestries. He had thought that they were beautiful. 

“Will, what is your connection to Hannibal Lecter?” Bedelia asks. Will swallows, licks his lips, and realizes he would gain nothing by lying.

“He was my friend,” he says in a choked voice, “and I wanted to run away with him.”

Bedelia stiffens. She smooths her skirt and leans forward, placing her hands on the table and focusing her gaze on him. She looks almost sympathetic. Will’s little boat is swaying in his mind, uprooted suddenly from its post in still waters, unprepared for the rough seas into which he has been cast. 

“I know you feel that you have no reason to trust me, but I am asking you to listen, Will,” Bedelia says. “No matter what you think you know about that man, you are wrong. You know nothing about Hannibal Lecter.”

Will can’t suppress a surge of bitter hurt, his lips curling and defensive words tumbling from his lips before he can stop them. “Oh? And _you_ do?” he asks, but she is unmoved by his antagonism. She simply gazes at him for several moments before filling the empty glass.

“Yes,” she says finally. “I know Hannibal Lecter. I was with him behind the veil. I saw him with his person suit stripped away.” Will stares at her, a sickening combination of jealousy and heartache spreading upwards from his stomach into his chest. It feels like vines growing, and Will wonders if they will unfurl right up his throat and out of his mouth.

“Why is he coming after you?” he manages to ask. 

Bedelia shifts in her chair, re-crossing her legs and taking another sip of wine.

“I helped the _polizia di Firenze_ catch him,” she says. “I notified them of Hannibal’s intent to murder a chief inspector. They caught him in the act. I testified against him for the murder. When he was found guilty, I took the money hidden in our _palazzo_ and I left. I believed Hannibal Lecter would rot in an Italian prison cell for the rest of his life.” She clears her throat and takes a long sip of wine. She gives him a watery smile. “It appears I was mistaken.”

Will’s mind recoils from every word Bedelia speaks. He is rooting through his chest of precious things, combing every memory of his time with Roman, desperate for a clue, for any indication that Bedelia is lying. The little girl with the cut throat stands behind Bedelia’s chair and watches him with pity in her eyes.

“If Hannibal Lecter wanted to kill you, why wouldn’t he just kill you?” he chokes out. “Why all this… pageantry? Why call himself Roman Fell?”

Bedelia swirls the wine in her glass and gives him a long, steady look. “Hannibal Lecter follows several trains of thought at once, without distraction from any,” she says slowly. “He is using a false identity to protect himself against name recognition. His real name was published in American papers after his capture in Italy. That is one train of thought.” She fingers the stem of her glass. “The other train is purely for his amusement. He called himself Roman Fell because he knew I would hear that name and be reminded of the man he took from me. He did it to taunt me. He did all of this to taunt me. Joseph, Sarah, his little displays. He plans to kill me, but he wanted to toy with me first.”

“So he came to America to kill you,” Will grits out, still desperate to find a faultline in her narrative. “Why involve me?”

“It’s likely he used you for information in the beginning, but then he saw something he liked,” she says, lifting her gaze to him. “Did he ask you a lot of questions when you first met? Hide them in the guise of flirtation?” 

Will thinks of the diner in Odessa, Roman’s questions about the Maury Brothers and the strange way he smiled when he said the words “ _Bedelia du Maurier_.” He thinks of the conversation behind the props trailer, when Roman asked him for examples of tasteless behavior and Will gave him the names of three people who are now dead.  

“Did Francis Dolarhyde attack you, Will?” Bedelia asks, and Will gives a short, sharp nod. She draws in a breath and smooths her skirt. “Hannibal sent Francis to kill you, Will,” she says. “As far as Hannibal knows, you are already dead. I won’t tell him otherwise. I’ll tell him you’re both dead. That you killed each other. You can be free of him, of the fate he intended for you.”

Will thinks of the chest he’s filled with imaginings of his life with Roman Fell, moments of love and companionship and comfort. He imagines lugging it out onto the deck of the ragged boat that is his mind and tossing it out into the waves. He feels a dark, empty space opening up at the very center of his being. He feels once again anchorless in a roiling black sea.

“Hannibal sent Francis to kill me?” he asks. His voice sounds like it is coming from very far away. Bedelia is studying him with a look of detached fascination.

“Yes,” she says calmly. “Francis murdered families before he joined my circus. He was a great admirer of _Il Mostro_. He wanted to impress Hannibal - to show Hannibal his true potential. Hannibal told him that killing you would do just that.” She clears her throat as Will lets out a strangled moan. “You are a loose end, Will, and Hannibal prefers not to leave any of those behind.”

Will barely hears her, his mind stumbling over memories of the Dragon’s roaring about reaching his potential, about blood and breath and fuel for radiance, about a butterfly emerging from a chrysalis. He begins to understand how deeply he’s been fooled. Bedelia falls silent as his body is wracked with tremors.

“What if I don’t believe you?” he asks in a hollow voice, and Bedelia sighs.

“I saw Hannibal Lecter pretend to be many things to many people, Will. And I saw him crush the skull of a man just like you after he grew tired of his company. Whatever you think you are to him, you are not.”

Will draws in a shuddering breath. He doesn’t realize he’s speaking until the words are out of his mouth. “What do you mean, ‘a man just like me’?” he asks, and Bedelia takes a sip of wine. 

“Hannibal Lecter may not be entirely human, but he has a few entirely human habits,” she says. “In Florence there was a man named Anthony Dimmond. He worshipped the ground Hannibal stepped on.” She takes a long sip of wine. “He was very… pretty, like you. But when Hannibal grew bored with their... relationship, he killed him. I saw it happen. I watched him bleed out on the floor.” She shifts so that she is leaning closer to Will across the table. Will can’t seem to get enough air into his lungs when she meets his eyes. “The next day, he ground Anthony’s flesh into pâté and served it as a canape, so that he could enjoy the pleasures of his flesh one last time.”

Will’s mind has become a haze of darkness. All around him is fog and thrashing seas. There is no lighthouse, no beacon, no guidepost in the storm. Everything he’d hoped for, everything he’d dared to believe in, has crumbled to dust before his eyes. He’d thought that Roman Fell loved him, understood him. He had chosen blindness, and this is what it brought him. He is as alone as he has ever been; as alone as anyone could ever be.

“If Hannibal Lecter had his way, you would already be dead, Will,” Bedelia says after several moments. “Try to remind yourself of that when you feel tempted to question me.”

Will can feel his eyes filling with tears. “I believe you,” he chokes out, and Bedelia lets out a breath.

“Good,” she says, and she leans back in her chair. “Where is Francis, Will?” she asks, and Will shudders.

“He’s in a barn about two miles west of here,” he stammers.

Bedelia hums. “You don’t need to worry about him any more, Will. What you need to worry about is getting far away from Hannibal Lecter.”

Will moves to stand abruptly, his jerky movements toppling the chair behind him. Bedelia stops him with a gentle hand on his arm.

“Will,” she says smoothly, “you need to leave tonight. Clean up, gather your things, and go.”

Will lets out a choked sob, then, feeling as if he has been transported back in time, as if he is stumbling out of a hunting shack on a muggy night in the bayou clutching a gun and running as his world falls apart around him, all alone and with nowhere to go.

Bedelia rises from the table and moves to a heavy wooden desk, unlocking a drawer and withdrawing several bills of cash. “I recommend that you disappear,” she says. “This should help you do that.” She extends her hand and Will takes the money with violently shaking hands. “Consider it a thank you for being a... distraction to Hannibal Lecter.”

Will feels like he might dissolve. He wishes he could, but instead he finds himself breaking down into sobs under the implacable gaze of Bedelia du Maurier. It’s all he can do to remain standing.

“It’s been nice to know you, Will Graham,” Bedelia says slowly. “Congratulations on surviving Hannibal Lecter with your sanity more or less intact.”

Will stumbles past her extended hand and staggers toward the door, flinching at the sound of her voice.

“Will,” she says, “if you ever feel inclined toward self-pity, assign yourself a moment of self-reflection and remember that you might have ended up on his menu.”

Will lurches out of her trailer and doesn’t look back.

 

 

\---

 

 

Will finds a motel outside of Oklahoma City and makes himself disappear. It’s remarkably easy to do, given that he already feels like he has ceased to exist. His bruised ribs ache and his bandaged shoulder throbs, but the pain feels more like a memory than a present state of affairs. The receptionist leers at him as she hands him the keys to his room.

“You feelin’ lonely tonight, honey?” she asks, and Will turns away.

Sleep evades him, and he tries to coax it closer with the help of cheap whiskey that burns all the way down his throat. He is exhausted, his movements sluggish, so he curls up on the dirty bed and tries to close the yawning void that has opened up where his heart used to be. He sinks into the borderland state between sleeping and wakefulness, plagued by the memory of hot lips on his neck and calloused hands ghosting over his skin. He hears whispers of silken words that take on physical form in the darkness, skittering like electricity across his navel. He feels the press of a sticky web against his skin. His cock is hard and aching, and he can feel the marrow being sucked from his bones.

Hannibal Lecter stole his humanity and gave birth to what is left: an empty space, a shuddering, shivering absence, a nightmare that is always, always wanting.

For the truth is, in spite of everything, Will still wants him. He wants the man that Hannibal Lecter pretended to be so badly that he imagines he is lying there beside him on the filthy motel bed, wearing his clothes from that first day in Odessa and smiling.

“Reba was right,” Will tells him in a shaking voice, “I wasn’t ready to find you.”

“Lucky for you, then,” the specter murmurs back, “that I promised to find you instead.”

Will draws in a breath and moves closer, shifting so that their faces are mere inches apart.

“You fed them to me, didn’t you?” he asks. “Joseph and Sarah. The omelette and the loin. I was eating them, wasn’t I?”

“Yes,” the specter says calmly.

“And Francis was next on your list, since he was the third name I gave you.”

“Yes. But you got to him first. How did it feel to kill Francis, Will?” the specter asks, and a shudder runs through Will’s body.

“I wish you had been there,” he whispers. The specter’s eyes gleam.

“Better than killing the man who murdered his daughter?” he asks, and Will nods.

“More intimate,” he whispers, and the specter smiles.

“It deserves intimacy,” he murmurs, and Will swallows around the lump in his throat.

“You lied to me,” he says. “Everything you ever said to me was a lie.”

The specter’s brow creases, and he moves to touch Will’s face.

“Not all of it,” he says.

“I let you know me,” Will whispers, and he doesn’t try to stop the tears that pool in his eyes and slip down his cheeks. “ _See_ me. I gave you a rare gift, but you didn’t want it.”

The specter reaches out and draws Will to his chest, stroking his back and kissing his hair.

“Didn’t I?” he asks, and Will chokes back a sob.

“Not enough to keep it,” he says.

“What about my gift to you, Will? I offered you acceptance. I offered you understanding. And yet you’re here, hiding in a motel room. You could still find me. You don’t have to run away.”

“You tried to have me killed,” Will whispers, and the specter lets out a thoughtful hum.

“Hannibal Lecter tried to have you killed, Will. But I am not Hannibal Lecter. I am Roman Fell.”

“And therein lies the problem,” Will groans, pressing his face into the specter’s neck.

“It’s hard to grasp what could have happened in some other world,” the specter says slowly. “In some other world, I might have been Hannibal Lecter all along. Would you still have loved me then, Will? If you had known my secrets the way I came to know yours, would you still cling to me as you do now?”

“Yes,” Will breathes out, his voice hoarse.

“And in this world, Will, would you be willing to forgive Hannibal Lecter his lies if you knew his feelings for you weren’t among them? If that part of his mask had revealed his true nature?”

“Yes,” Will whispers, and the specter kisses the top of his head.

“I’m sorry, Will,” he says, his voice laced with regret. “Perhaps in some other world you and Hannibal Lecter could be lovers, but not in this one. In this world, the risk is too great. Now that you are no longer useful to him, Hannibal Lecter might simply kill you. You know that.”

“Yes,” Will echoes, “I know. But I still want him. I want him in spite of everything I know.” The specter’s arms tighten around him, and Will lets out a choked sob. “I feel _betrayed_. But is it betrayal if none of it was real?”

“Betrayal and forgiveness are best seen as something akin to falling in love. You cannot control with respect to whom you fall in love, Will,” the specter says softly, and Will clings to his shoulders, “but you can control how you respond to it. You must find some way to weather this storm, with or without your lighthouse.”

“I don’t want to be alone anymore,” Will murmurs, and the specter holds him closer.

“You’re not alone, Will,” he says. “I told you, I’m right here beside you.”

Will wakes to early morning sunlight glinting painfully off the glass of an empty whiskey bottle. The sheets are soaked with sweat and blood, and the little girl sits in a chair by the window, her face creased with worry as she watches him. Will thinks, then, about Reba, how she must be waking up to news that Francis Dolarhyde is dead. He thinks about Margot, how fortunate it is that she left for Tulsa before any of this hell broke loose. He thinks about Peter, how painful it must be for him to believe that Will is dead. He thinks about Bedelia du Maurier, how she surrounds herself with killers and manages to remain unscathed.

He forces himself to stand, to clean himself and re-bandage the knife wound in his shoulder. He forces himself to change into his one remaining set of clean clothes and to drop the keys off at the desk. He forces himself to limp out into the morning, clutching a bag over his good shoulder and extending one thumb towards the road. He forces himself to climb into the passenger seat of a long-haul truck carrying live pigs, holding his breath as the stench of them wafts toward him. He forces himself to smile at the driver, a florid man who looks to be in his early sixties.

“Hello young man,” the driver says. “Where ya headed?”

“Wherever you’re headed,” Will tells him, and the man laughs.

“I’m on my way to Virginia,” he says. “Settle in, it’s gonna be a long one. It’ll be good to have company.”

Will allows a small smile. He can tell that the driver is a kind-hearted man.

“I got some books there behind the seat if you’re interested,” the driver says, lurching the truck back onto the road. “Help yourself.”

Will reaches behind himself with his good arm, more out of politeness than any real interest, and pulls out the first book that his fingers touch. It’s a tattered copy of _The Scarlet Letter_. The sting of irony is so sharp that Will can’t suppress a strangled laugh.

“Y’like that one?” the driver asks, and Will finds himself faced with a grief so immense he can hardly breathe.

“Yeah,” he says distantly, “it’s a favorite of mine.”

“No shit?” the driver says. “Well hell then, why don’t you keep it?”

Will barely hears him. He has strapped himself to the mast of his battered boat on the sea, enduring piercing winds and riotous waves as he opens to the first page of _The Scarlet Letter_ and begins to read _._ The specter of Hannibal Lecter looks over his shoulder, gazing curiously at the text.

“Do you have any secrets, Will?” the specter asks, and Will smiles.

“Me?” he murmurs. “None at all.”

 

 

 


	4. Coda: A Trip for Biscuits

 

 

A Trip for Biscuits

 

 

Hannibal knows that something is wrong the moment he arrives in Oklahoma City.

The Maury Brothers camp is in an uproar: the Dragon Man is dead and Bedelia du Maurier has disappeared. No-one seems to know the whereabouts of a dark-haired mechanic named Will Graham until Hannibal finds Peter Bernadone, who tells him in a trembling voice that Will is gone, that Will is everywhere and nowhere.

Hannibal imagines a teacup made of priceless bone china, wrought with care by loving hands. He imagines that beautiful teacup picked up by a slim-fingered hand, held aloft in front of curled blond hair, and unceremoniously dropped to the floor. He feels similarly shattered. He has very few regrets in his life, but he regrets parting from Will Graham in Fort Worth. He regrets the weeks he spent needlessly away from him, calling upon the woman in Tallahassee and securing a house on the island of Santorini. He regrets that he did not simply kill Bedelia that day in Odessa and tell Will the truth then. But he did not know. He believed himself untouchable. He was wrong, and he is sick with grief.

He spends the next four months searching for Bedelia du Maurier and devising ways to make her death more painful. He imagines roasting her severed leg in clay and forcing her to eat it. He imagines feeding her fingers to snails and serving them to her as escargot. He imagines lighting her on fire, recompense for setting his world ablaze. He spends so much time thinking about how he will kill Bedelia du Maurier that he fails to consider that she might be playing the long game with him until he finally finds her tucked away in a palatial house in Barcelona. She points a gun at him, but she knows that will not stop him.

“Will Graham is alive,” she says.

Hannibal stops short. He has spent so long believing Will Graham dead that he is painfully slow to react.

“Francis Dolarhyde tried to kill Will Graham. Francis was an admirer of yours. He saw you with Will in Fort Worth and decided to show you his ‘true potential’. I did not discourage him. I was… curious to see what would happen.”

Hannibal’s fingers clench around the chef’s knife he’s holding and Bedelia visibly swallows.

“I told Will Graham you sent Francis to kill him. I told him he was no more than a pawn to you. He believed me.” Hannibal takes a step forward and she lifts the gun higher, her eyes flinty. “ _Contrapasso_ , Hannibal,” she says. “You took my lover, I took yours. But I can give him back.”

Hannibal hasn’t said a word; he doesn’t need to.

“I’ll tell you where to look for him if you make me a promise, Hannibal,” she says, and suddenly the pieces slide into place, and Hannibal understands. She knew, somehow, what Will Graham meant to him, and she devised a means of using him as leverage; she found a way to slip the noose from around her neck. He would be impressed, if he weren’t so furious. “Promise me that you’ll never call on me again, and I’ll tell you where to go.”

As angry as Hannibal is at Bedelia du Maurier, as often as he has dreamed of cracking her ribs with his fingers, there is no question as to what he will do.

“I promise,” he says. And he always keeps his promises.

Bedelia gives him the name of a woman in Tulsa, a teacher named Alana Bloom. Hannibal arrives to discover that it is not precisely Alana he seeks, but her companion. Hannibal remembers her: Margot, the woman from the diner in Odessa. He spends several days observing both women, and he determines quickly that they are lovers. They cannot seem to stop smiling despite the fact that their house is in an uproar. Movers swarm in and out like ants, and the word among them is that Margot’s brother died under mysterious circumstances. It seems Alana and her young son are accompanying Margot to Maryland to take ownership of Margot’s family property. Hannibal watches the women smirk at one another across their sitting room and reasons he knows how Margot’s brother met his end.

On the fourth day, the women take the young boy out for dinner, and the house is left unoccupied. It takes very little time for Hannibal to break in, and even less time for him to find the stack of letters that Margot stores in the roll-top desk in the foyer. He sifts through letters from lawyers, Verger family members, and a particularly irate missive from the Southern Baptist Convention lambasting Margot for stealing the Verger fortune away from them until at last he finds what he seeks: a small, faded postcard with a brief but heartfelt message and the signature of one Will Graham. Hannibal has the strange feeling that a bird has taken residence in his stomach as he copies down an address in Wolf Trap, Virginia, and his legs feel weak as he makes his way back out into the dusk.

He reaches Wolf Trap nearly six months after that terrible day in Oklahoma City. He has been on the road for twenty hours, and darkness has long since fallen over the quiet little town. He had planned to check into a motel and clean himself up, to change out of traveling clothes and into something that fits him to more advantage before revealing himself to Will. Instead, he finds himself making his way to the address immediately upon his arrival, pulled as if by an invisible force. It is a small diner, empty at this time of night, and through the wide glass windows he can see Will Graham working. Hannibal stands in the darkness as Will wipes down the counter and collects stray mugs, and he thinks that Will’s movements are more beautiful than any ballet he has ever seen performed. He thinks that if he saw Will everyday, forever, he would remember this time. He feels his pulse race and his fingers shift, and he resists the urge to press his palm against the window. Will Graham has this effect on him, he’s noticed. He can never seem to keep his hands still around him. They always seem to want to touch.

And when at last he can bear it no longer, he goes through the door. Will turns to face him at the sound of the bell, and when their gazes meet Hannibal hears a symphony burst forth. It’s as if he has been unable to feel anything in full measure since their parting in Fort Worth, and sensation returns to him now at last. Color seems brighter and more vivid: the ruddy flush of Will’s cheeks, his parted lips, the shock of his pale skin against the dark curls that cling to his face. Will is more beautiful than any painting, more transcendent than any vaulted church. What can Hannibal say to him? What words could possibly be worthy of the man who changed him so utterly from the solitary creature he’d been before?

“Hello, Will,” he says at last, and it seems to be enough.

  
  
  
 

Hannibal has sketchbooks filled with nothing but Will Graham.

An entire shelf of his library is dedicated to the journey that has been their time together. Those first rushed sketches after their meeting in Odessa: wide eyes and a murky smile cast in speckled sunlight across the table of a diner. Will reclined in the bathtub in Fort Worth, his head back and his skin damp with condensation. And a gap of many months, then, when Hannibal thought Will gone forever, and could not bear to put his hand to paper. But after Wolf Trap, such an explosion of vision and inspiration that pencil could hardly contain it. Will bare-legged and wind-tousled on the deck of a trans-Atlantic ship, Will scratching the ears of a stray dog in Paris, Will absent-mindedly eating an apple beneath the arched shadow of the Duomo. Will, painted in blood and magnificent in fury after an old enemy of Hannibal’s attacked them in the street. And now, a new drawing to add: Will dozing peacefully on an olivewood sofa, sprawled like a nymph beneath the setting Grecian sun. His nose and cheeks are pink after hours spent fishing, and Hannibal regrets that he cannot capture the color with graphite. He watches him, tracing the curves of his face on the paper, caressing the length of his neck and the quiet strength in his sturdy hands.

Hannibal went to America in 1936 for the sole purpose of killing Bedelia du Maurier. Instead, he fell in love. He remembers a phrase he heard in St. Louis, a young woman saying that she’d driven all the way from out of town to buy shoes only to find her favorite store closed. “I took a trip for biscuits!” she told Hannibal, and the words stuck in his mind. He supposes, all things considered, that his journey to America might be considered a trip for biscuits, given that Bedelia du Maurier is still alive. And yet, as he traces the shape of Will’s sleeping smile across the surface of his sketchbook, he cannot help but think he got the better end of her deal.

 

  


End file.
